Speeches by Yang.

“To add to the point about capital, Mr Osborne, you mentioned in an interview that you regret the amount of capital cuts that you made during that period. You just mentioned that you attempted to course correct. Why was there the attempt to cut capital spending at a time when interest rates were almost zero, so you woul…”

“You mentioned what is in the political textbooks: the political incentive to spend down the whole headroom, in effect handing over to a new Government without any rainy-day reserves in case of turbulence. Under that logic, every five years there would be a running down of headroom, then a huge Budget, then a running-do…”

“Mr Osborne, you mentioned that it is more difficult to raise than to lower taxes, and earlier that the Government are, to some extent, a victim of the low headroom—£10 billion in headroom, which is the same level as under Jeremy Hunt, post-2022, and a lower headroom than before the pandemic. Do you feel that it was irr…”

“Sir Vince, is there anything you want to add to that description?”

“Mr. Osborne, you mentioned at the start of that answer that the Treasury overruled you. Could you go a bit more into the detail of that?”

“You both mentioned the mansion tax and revaluing some council tax bands, which was a coalition Government proposal from back in 2012. I am curious about the political economy of that. What were the difficulties in discussing that within the coalition and getting that enacted? What do you think would be the challenges n…”

“Mr Osborne, you mentioned that you do not regret scrapping Sure Start because there could have been other investments in early years that would have been more effective. Did you make those other investments?”

“We were not in the euro at the time.”

“I want to zoom out a bit more. We are talking about the regrets of the 2010s, and I was at university during the 2010s.”

“By 2015-16, central bankers were also coming out not to directly criticise but hint at problems with this monetary fiscal settlement. Central banks had been trying to lean against the impact of a contractionary Budget. For example, in 2016 Mark Carney warned that the Bank on its own could not lift growth off for the UK…”

“At the time did the Treasury, which I presume had the similar mainstream orthodox view of macroeconomics that academic economists had, warn you that attempting to run a contractionary Budget would delay the recovery in itself?”

“We can go into many different regrets in that stage of my life, but I was studying economics during the coalition Government and I want to return to the topic of growth that we discussed at the beginning. At the time, the accepted orthodoxy of the economics department was that a desire to run a surplus budget at a time…”

“I think the families who used Sure Start would have felt differently about that, but let us zoom back.”

“It was generally felt, but was there evidence, because you just referred to evidence?”

“Was there evidence given to you at the time by the Treasury or other Departments about the cost-effectiveness of Sure Start?”

“That is not what you did at the time.”

“And you felt those were more effective than keeping Sure Start?”

“Would you propose that this Labour Government continue with its plans?”

“Just to start, I have a very quick yes/no question to summarise a lot of what we just discussed. Do you believe that lifting the two-child limit is the most effective way of reducing child poverty with the amount of money that it would take? I am thinking about its cost-effectiveness.”

“What would you like to see instead?”