Speeches by Dean.

“I would have to ask the—”

“Ms Allsopp, I know you have been keen to come in, but I will ask you an additional question too. How much does council tax bear on people’s decision making about where to move? Obviously, different authorities have very different rates. Have you seen much evidence of council tax changing people’s decisions?”

“Can I push you on the frequency? You say that the bulk of it would be reasonably easy to do, but we would need this more effortful work as well. Under a new system, or a revision of the current system, how frequently do you think we could revalue properties?”

“Mr Donnell, I wonder if you can build on that point. The existence of things such as Zoopla is probably giving confidence to politicians that valuations are easy now, because they are telling me all the time via email what my house is worth at any moment in time. You said that it is actually a bit more complicated than…”

“You said there seems to be some sort of issue with the public perception of it, but have there been many technical challenges in the valuations? Have you seen that in your sector?”

“I want to move on to council tax. I know Professor Leunig has a proposal on that too, so we will come back to that, but first can I hear from Ms Willis about the experience in Wales, as they have tried to revalue council tax there?”

“It may not be worth the pain then. Professor Leunig, do you want to come in?”

“I have already shared with colleagues that I paid a stamp duty bill on Friday, so this is extremely topical for me. We did exactly what you described, Ms Allsopp, which is try to make a bigger step to avoid paying it twice in the next five years—I hope nothing changes in the next couple of weeks, because I will be quit…”

“Mr Osborne, do you want to respond to that point about the 25-year view of social infrastructure, and whether we are weaker now because we leaned too heavily on public spending cuts?”

“I want to take the long-run view as well. We have talked about the bond markets, but they will respond to a variety of economic models, so there is no one pathway—it is just that you need a credible plan. Part of the coalition’s plan was to weigh more heavily on spending cuts than tax rises; I think there was an 80:20 …”

“Sir Vince, you say that the value of these free trade deals is worth 10% of the deal that we had with the European Union. Is that in net terms? Obviously, the EU is free to negotiate trade deals with all these other countries as well. Are you saying that one of the freedoms of Brexit means that we have been able to get…”

“Some form of independent review?”

“This has been mentioned already, but with state pensions and public sector pensions coming from general taxation, this feels to me like a big and increasing forecasting problem for the public finances in the long run. Should we be getting the OBR to independently review and forecast what that liability looks like? Shou…”

“Mr Osborne, may I pick up on something you said about the OBR backing off? By that, did you mean that the Treasury should be allowed to stick to some of its own forecasts, such as what trade deals it thinks will happen or the impact of the planning Bill, and then take the political risk—so the OBR assesses those things…”

“We have spoken a little about the OBR. I think you said, Mr Osborne, that the OBR needs to back off a bit; Sir Vince, you said that instead of marking answers, it is starting to set the questions. There has been a lot of talk about the degree of fiscal headroom that the Chancellor has left herself and about how much th…”

“Sir Vince, we talked earlier about the growth in the size of the state, and Mr Osborne remarked that it really started in 2019. A lot of the time, we talk about this as if it is a political choice, but there has been quite a lot of demographic change in our society, with more money spent on pensions, more money spent o…”

“Are the people who are calling for tax simplification or major tax reform just politically naive? Are we doomed to have an ever more complicated tax system as we have to appease all these different sectors in the economy?”

“You did set up the Office of Tax Simplification, as you said, so I guess you recognised that there was a need for fundamental simplification, but we have the most complex tax system ever now. Did you miss an opportunity?”

“Those are quite small-fry reforms, are they not? What about fundamental reform?”

“I was explaining to colleagues before this session that I wrote my master’s dissertation on British newspaper reporting of the mansion tax, but I will not persist, although there are 1,000 questions that I would love to ask. One thing I came across when doing that research was the Mirrlees review, which I am sure you w…”