Speeches by Dean.

“I can see that Professor Advani wants to come in. What about the other aspect that has been floated: a limit on the amount that you could give away before your death?”

“Would extending it from seven years to 10 or 15 years solve that problem, because people would not want to give up their wealth so early?”

“I am going to move away from controversial taxes and talk about inheritance tax. On the one hand, we have people saying, “This is outrageous. I pay tax all my life, and then I die and they tax me again,” and on the other hand, other people say, “This is outrageous. Somebody is getting something for nothing. They do not…”

“The spending review is for everybody but the Treasury—”

“Ruth Curtice, did you want to come in on that point?”

“It just gets more expensive.”

“Can I just push you on one point relating to that? We know that when we speculate about productivity gains that could be earned from activities such as the ones you have just described, the OBR tends not to score them very strongly, because there is a lot of uncertainty there. At the same time, however, the sorts of re…”

“We are going to be talking a lot about tax today, but we thought it would also be useful to look briefly at alternatives to tax—whether there is any realistic chance of us getting big boosts to productivity or seeing a large amount of spending cuts. There are obviously lots of ideas out there about whether we can cut t…”

“I thank the co-sponsors for securing the debate and for all colleagues’ powerful contributions so far tonight. Many of those contributions have focused on preventable baby loss, calling for lessons to be learnt and for more to be done, which I fully support. However, I would like to take this opportunity to shine a lig…”

“I admire the Government’s attempts to pin this on the previous Conservative Government. It is an endeavour in which I would usually join them, but on this occasion I cannot, because the argument simply does not stack up. The argument seems to hinge on the Conservative Government’s classification of China as a threat to…”

“China has broken international agreements with the UK. It has placed bounties on the heads of Hongkongers seeking refuge in this country. Today’s announcement that charges have been dropped will only embolden China in its efforts to interfere with our democracy. The Minister has mentioned the effectiveness of the forei…”

“We touched last time on market integrity and the potential for firm failure. Most of the fears that there will be widespread firm failure as a result of this have subsided, but there might still be some at the margins. I am not sure whether you are aware of any particularly at-risk firms or not. If that was to happen, …”

“Does that include the report? I believe that the diagnostic report commissioned is quite an expensive one, and it would be quite critical to your understanding of the market. Is that right?”

“I have one more point on the construction of the redress scheme. One core principle is about market integrity. I totally understand: we do not want the market to collapse and consumers to lose out as a result. A lot of those big fears have subsided because the fiduciary duty and the bribery claims have gone away. I und…”

“This is my final question. Whether or not a consumer was aware of the arrangement, whether it was buried in a deep agreement or whether they had the ability to understand the arrangement, that would be case by case. When it comes to the level of commission, it was shockingly high in the case that won in the Supreme Cou…”

“Would you accept that the person who won the Supreme Court case is not one of those?”

“You have engaged with some, but I know that HD Law, for example, which won the Supreme Court case alongside Sentinel, says that it has been trying to make contact with you but has had next to zero engagement with the FCA. It has datasets, which it has shown me, of all the cases that it is running through the court, whi…”

“I understand that. The reason I am probing is that I have been engaging with some of the more reputable legal firms. They have told me that the vast majority of cases they were pursuing through the courts were on this basis of unfair relationship. They are concerned that overall estimates that have been put out there s…”

“It sounds like you do not have a firm idea. It is just, at the moment, an estimate based on overall number of cases and your best guess at what proportion of them might fall under this category.”

“As you said, there is clarity between there being a fiduciary duty on the lender, which was dismissed, and there being an unfair relationship. The next question comes on to the extent to which we think the number of cases that were in the system were on this basis of an unfair relationship. There has been an impression…”