Speeches by Yang.

“On that point, you wrote in the 2019 Resolution Foundation paper about the public sector net worth as a target. As you describe in the fiscal risks report, there are significant financial liabilities that are captured in PSNFL, but there are also non-financial assets like the pipes and the physical infrastructure that …”

“The second IMF recommendation was to only formally assess the fiscal rules once a year, at the time of the Budget. Obviously, that would also require legislation. What is your view on that, and what is your advice to lawmakers on that?”

“I mean for the actual rule to track the confidence interval, rather than the binary—”

“How workable do you think it would be to change the binary yes/no question, “Will we meet this rule or not?” to a confidence interval? That would obviously require legislation.”

“It is for many of us on this Committee. Do you go into more detail because you are starting to hear more from the ONS on the risks of your classification? Could you tell me a bit more about how you see that changing over the next year or so?”

“I have some questions about external organisations’ reflections on the OBR’s work, some of which is published in external reviews this year. First, Laura van Geest, your former counterpart at the Dutch fiscal watchdog, has written in an external review recommending that you focus more on highlighting uncertainty in you…”

“Do you have a view on how PSNFL would change over the next few years if any water companies were reclassified?”

“Are you currently making preparations to forecast the financial liabilities of water companies to get ready for potential reclassification? Could you talk us through what the different steps would be in the next few years if something like that did happen?”

“Mr Hughes, I note that in your fiscal risks report that you have gone into a bit more detail than usual on the risk of water companies being potentially reclassified as public sector. As a south-eastern MP, my constituents suffer the financial risks of Thames Water every month, so it is a very live issue.”

“Does that suggest that you believe that the ONS has too many priorities right now and it cannot sufficiently do them all well with the resource it has?”

“For me, this process also seems to outline a pattern, which I will describe and you can tell me if you agree. For example, in the early 2010s, the Bank of England at the time was unhappy with flow of funds data. Since it is in public, there is pressure put on the ONS to improve and there are these reviews by external e…”

“I am going to ask a bit about the Labour Force Survey and the economic reviews that have happened over the last few decades. There have been a series of external expert reviews of economic statistics at the ONS for several decades now. For example, a theme that I saw emerging in the Barker review from the early 2010s i…”

“We will have to move on in terms of time, but just to put on the record that if I had been a statistician working for the ONS, I would still remain a bit confused as to what the original plan was for this TLFS, which of course would impact the execution of it.”

“Sir Robert, did you want to add anything?”

“So the original intention was to have the shorter, more compact survey, and then it lost its way through the process?”

“Just to return to a previous topic, I wanted to get something straight about the design of the TLFS. In the answers that you gave to my questions earlier as a panel, you described that the original intent of it was not necessarily to produce a shorter survey. In its concluding remarks, the Methodological Assurance Revi…”

“So the initial design of the TLFS was not that it was meant to be shorter than the LFS. That is helpful to know.”

“Can I just clarify? To replay the account that you just made, am I right in thinking that in 2022, the TLFS was being prepared and the initial intention was to start with a short survey that was easier for people to answer. But as the months rolled on, more of your end users—the bank and so on—asked for extra questions…”

“I would like to turn back to the Transformed Labour Force Survey, which was first announced in 2022 to be—among other things—a way of responding to the drop-off rate in response that you were seeing during the pandemic. This survey was meant to be launched by early 2024; we now know that that has been put back by three…”

“My hon. Friend talks eloquently about the need for better regulation. We have just heard that he is a fan of Banbury United and that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) is a fan of Crystal Palace. Does that not show that there is complete agreement across the football pyramid that there needs to be bet…”