Speeches by Olney.

“It is still an increase.”

“So, given that the £45 billion to £66 billion spread is in 2019 prices, we can expect to see that shift upwards, can we?”

“Can I pin you down on that? Do you think that when the spending review happens is when you will finally start to use 2025 numbers, as they will be then?”

“Something else that the Committee finds unsatisfactory is the fact that the £45 billion to £66 billion spread is still being expressed in 2019 prices.”

“The question is more about the lessons learned. I mean, the costs are the costs. Obviously, they were not costs that were planned at the start of the project, because you planned to finish it, but what are the lessons that have been learned by the Department?”

“To be clear, I mean that because you are saying that the Treasury is involved every step of the way, once you have reached agreement you expect it to be quite soon after that that Treasury will sign off on the budget.”

“Dame Bernadette, you said to me that an agreement is being reached between HS2 and the Department for Transport on what the new costs look like, and you are working very closely with the Treasury. Your answer seemed to imply that you think that once you have landed on that figure, which we know will be somewhere betwee…”

“Once you have agreed among yourselves what the new costs look like, you will have to go back to the Treasury, Dame Bernadette. What is your estimate of the timescale for getting a new agreement with the Treasury?”

“Dame Bernadette, the decommissioning costs so far have been £2.2 billion—I think that is correct—or that is the loss that has been reported to date. Can you perhaps give some reflection on how the costs have got to that level and what lessons the Department might have learned from the decommissioning work that it has c…”

“To continue on Euston, Mr Over, there is continued uncertainty for local residents around the future of the Euston development, which it seems from your previous answers is projected to continue for quite some time. It is obviously having a very negative effect on local businesses that might be trying to find investmen…”

“Not just for HS2, but for any project?”

“I appreciate that I am getting slightly hypothetical here, but if in future you find yourself in the position of needing to assess the costs of stopping a programme versus the costs of continuing it, what lessons from stopping phase 2 will you be able to apply?”

“I was coming to that, because the Report makes it clear that the need to keep annual spending under a certain limit has actually increased overall cost. Will your case to the Treasury be that you need an overall spend limit rather than these annual limits?”

“In July of this year, it was revealed that 173,000 YouTube videos, including material created by globally recognised British musicians, news channels and artists, had been scraped into a dataset used to train AI models. Content from over 40,000 creatives has been found in this dataset, yet I do not believe that consent…”

“I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues are supportive of the extension of this legislation and its ambition to make our second Chamber a more equal and representative place. I am glad to see the legislation move so swiftly through Parliament and I plan to play my part in that. We are glad of the intention of the Bill to …”

“ Do you think the online marketplaces have access to enough HMRC data to be able to do most effectively the job they need to do?”

“ Ms Ciniewicz, how are you working with the online marketplaces to make sure that they are applying the correct VAT treatment?”

“ You are currently estimating that about half of the £300 million that you identify as deliberate evasion from selling goods and services online comes from the online marketplaces. What makes you so sure about that?”

“ Sir Jim, there is a striking piece of evidence at figure 10 in the report about how online marketplaces are being used and actively marketed as a way of evading tax rules. I wonder if you could comment, perhaps, on what HMRC is doing about cracking down on this marketing of evasion tactics to …”

“ Thank you. Ms Ciniewicz, there has been a big underestimate of previous losses, even if we are not quite sure why. What assurances can you give us that there are not other areas where we may have underestimated losses, for example in the setting up …”