Speeches by Yang.

“The approach of the Conservative party here and in the Lords has been to delay this Bill and any progress made on regulation for far too many months, during which my club has struggled to go on without any independent regulation. I would like to see some reflection from Conservative Front Benchers about what that means…”

“My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I am very surprised to see Conservative Front Benchers whipping their colleagues to oppose a Bill that they had previously introduced in part and supported. We had built a cross-society consensus because of the work of Dame Tracey and many others like her, and we should respect t…”

“Let me begin by drawing the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I rise to speak today with a sense of relief, because Reading football club has finally been sold. I was one of thousands in the stadium in my constituency during the May bank holiday weekend when we heard that th…”

“I hear the most thought-provoking questions from my youngest constituents. On a recent visit to an infant school, a six-year-old asked me what I thought the Government’s most important achievements might be. Today, I would like to tell her that our two local authorities, Wokingham and Reading borough councils, which pr…”

“As my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) mentioned, there were seven different sets of fiscal rules under the previous Government. The shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Sir Mel Stride), has announced that he has reflected on the mistakes made by the Truss Government and I am …”

“Are you saying that there was the ability for your senior civil servants to make representations and that that would be heard but not necessarily acted on at the senior level, and that is what you are trying to change?”

“In your experience of the ONS’s work, do you feel that culture of challenge once existed and has deteriorated over time or that you are building it up from scratch now?”

“Mrs Rourke, first can I say that I very much admire your stepping into the breach, because it is a tremendously significant responsibility and task that you are taking on right now? I want to return to Mr Carling’s questions about when people became aware of issues and the testimony of the former National Statistician,…”

“I always appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks in the Treasury Committee and in the Chamber as an extremely fair-minded colleague. I appreciated his remarks in yesterday’s statement and the admission that the previous Government’s handling of our recovery from the pandemic was not what it should have been. Howe…”

“I thank the Secretary of State and her colleagues in the Department for their tireless work over the past week, and I very much welcome her commitment to co-production with disabled people in the Timms review. The atrocious handling of the pandemic by the previous Conservative Government has left the economy and disabl…”

“To follow on from Mr Dean’s point on tax reliefs, many non-structural tax reliefs are meant to have the same kind of impact as other spending that would be departmental spending within the review—for example, R&D tax credits are meant to stimulate R&D, but we know very little about their actual impact on R&D. I appreci…”

“Chief Secretary, I am going to ask a few questions about the process of the review itself. It is a long process, involving lots of discussion, internally and externally. I am sure that you have received many different submissions, including my own submission for my constituency. How would you make it a more enjoyable p…”

“I am looking forward to the next spending review, which I cannot wait to get into. How would you make that process even more collaborative? Ministers have talked about the fact that delivery requires co-operation, but the allocation of the funding envelope can still feel very adversarial. Joint funding bids are really …”

“Finally, the Chair mentioned in opening questions the lack of a spend-to-save culture at the Treasury. The economists who gave evidence to our panel last week also spoke about the problem of preventive spending getting lost between the cracks of different Departments. One example—SEND—is an issue very close to my heart…”

“What are the obstacles within the Treasury and its statutory agencies to getting that preventive thinking and the calculation of fiscal benefits mainstreamed, would you say?”

“Local government is responsible for many of the cross-cutting objectives within the Government’s missions. When it comes to cross-cutting issues such as social care and SEND, how do you decide what spending is allocated between, say, education, health and social care and local government?”

“On SEND funding, the incoming head of the IFS told us last week that that was the area where the greatest unmet needs were opening up, particularly with projected future demand and the current funding available. Do you see that as an issue? Do you also see the increased devolution of funding responsibility to local cou…”

“How confident are you in the ability for reform to drive improvements in SEND, particularly when the education budget—taking out the free school meals policy—is flat in terms of spending rises?”

“Professor Lawrence, could you expand on your point that over the last few years the trend has gone in the wrong direction?”

“Professor Lawrence, I want to come back on your point about the ONS data. This Committee has heard from the ONS and interrogated the ONS about the problems with the labour force survey and other national statistics. There is currently a Cabinet Office investigation into the ONS. Do you have any advice for how the ONS c…”