Speeches by Yang.

“Putting aside again the historical decision to start the indemnity process, which was made long, long ago—many previous Governments ago—does the Treasury, or do you, have a view on whether, given the current fiscal and macroeconomic outlook, the commercial banking sector needs that £30 billion a year from the taxpayer?”

“Bringing in Ms Russell and Ms Beckett, if appropriate, could you give a kind of concrete, worked-through example of how the Treasury would negotiate this zero-based review? Let’s say one Department is spending money on youth clubs and another is spending money on filling in potholes; would you be asking for the same se…”

“In that process, would the Treasury then be speaking to each Department about specifically, “How many youth clubs are you procuring? How many potholes are you filling?” Would it be that detailed, or would it be more a sense of making sure that their processes are correct? What level of detail would you get?”

“Does anyone on the panel know which subjects the Office for Value for Money is looking at? I think you mentioned two or three subjects.”

“We look forward to that. Secondly, I know that efficiency savings are a goal of almost every single Government. Have there ever been reviews of previous efficiency savings and whether they have led to a reduction in service provision?”

“I suppose the definition of efficiency savings, as I understand it, is about trying not to lead to a decrease in provision. You are trying to find other ways of saving cost, for example on the procurement side.”

“I am concerned about sectors in which productivity is more or less fixed. For example, you need one teacher for, say, every five toddlers in a pre-school. You cannot change that ratio very much, unless robots become very effective in the next few years.”

“In those sectors—particularly in unprotected departments, such as funding for local councils, which fund social care, SEND in schools and so on—it is predominantly women who pick up the slack and withdraw from the workforce when services are cut back, as we saw during the pandemic. Is there an assessment in the spendin…”

“Will you conduct an equalities impact assessment? If so, how long and how rigorous will it be and how will it be done?”

“I am not questioning that action needed to be taken in the light of the financial crisis and so on, and the origins of QE and the indemnity signing in, I think, 2008—it was around that time, or 2009, perhaps. My question is, in the light of the fiscal situation that the Government are now in, and given that you are con…”

“The reason why I ask that is, when we speak to the Bank of England about this, it will of course say that the impact on the taxpayer is not for it to consider and that it is a consideration for the Treasury. Of course, what you are saying is that the monetary policy side is for the Bank to consider, and I completely ag…”

“Ms Russell, you mentioned earlier that the Treasury is also conducting its own zero-based review of its own costs. Do you consider the Treasury indemnity to the Bank of England’s asset purchase facility as one of those costs? I note the publication from the Bank yesterday that estimates around £30 billion a year is bei…”

“I don’t know whether you are looking at millions of spending lines across all Departments, but do you have a sense of how many of those have social value estimates?”

“Are there any examples—this is perhaps for Mr Smewing—of the green flags that you would want back from certain Departments to make sure that their youth clubs programme, let’s say, was value for money, or some red flags that would show you that it wasn’t? What kinds of examples would you want?”

“In terms of social value, or in terms of taxpayer money? What kind of evaluation would that be?”

“So it would be social value defined in terms of the impact on the taxpayers of funding over all public services provision in the longer run—if that data is possible; that is the ideal.”

“Are those specialists who you have in-house trained to deal with economic abuse in domestic abuse cases as well?”

“Do you have your own in-house team dealing with this kind of abuse?”

“On the point about training, I wanted to ask about economic abuse, and particularly domestic and financial abuse. The FCA, for example, recommends that financial firms have specialist teams dealing with this kind of abuse. I was wondering whether the FOS also has its own in-house specialist teams.”

“That is great to hear. When will that start happening, and will you publish this for all to see as well?”