Speeches by Olney.

“Mr Athow, to what extent are businesses having to incur undue cost to comply?”

“Are these side-by-side computations, or is this new one replacing the other one?”

“Ms Newbury, how is the new agreement from January this year likely to impact compliance with the pillar 2 rules?”

“Are you forecasting any change to the level of compliance as a result of the change?”

“So it is two separate calculations.”

“Does that change introduce more cost for businesses?”

“This is the top-up payment where companies were paying less than 15%—”

“Another good segue. Pillar 2 is about complying with the OECD agreement to levy a minimum tax. What is HMRC doing to ensure there is sufficient support to those companies that will come under the pillar 2 regime to make sure they are compliant?”

“Understood. Secondly, the PAC recommendation was that HMRC should be looking at what has been achieved as a result of the child trust fund, so it is a little bit broader than what you have said your investigation will be looking at.”

“I have two quick follow-ups. First, if you know who the money belongs to, what is stopping you just releasing it to them?”

“And then the new agreement and the way it will be calculated results in a reduction.”

“The debate surrounding a third runway at Heathrow has stretched over the past three decades. The Liberal Democrats have long stood by communities who oppose a third runway, arguing that the economic benefits are overstated and the environmental consequences are unavoidable. Although I have always opposed a third runway…”

“I have a final question, Mr Glass. How are you going to ensure that your function is not going to hold up the implementation of the overall shared services project any further?”

“I think so, yes.”

“How long will it take before everyone is using the same shared standard?”

“I understand that. I just want to highlight paragraph 2.14 in the Report, which says that four of the functions—finance, HR, grants and commercial—consolidate their existing standards into the NOVA system, which you were talking about. However, it says: “HR participated in the design process but did not work towards im…”

“From now on, you will have future policy changes. Can there not be a standardised implementation?”

“Okay. So the Report’s findings that it wasn’t doing that are now being addressed?”

“What are the remaining obstacles to progress?”

“But is it correct to say that the people function decided not to implement a functional standard and that that is one of the reasons?”