Speeches by Dean.

“I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing this debate. Let me highlight one point that he made about the circular economy. He said that if we get the regulation and the incentives right, it would be good not only for the environment, but for business and the economy. T…”

“We have just had our fifth consecutive month of job losses announced, and research shows that as many as 17% of companies are considering redundancies. What is the Government’s analysis of why this is happening?”

“The Chancellor announced quite a list of reforms yesterday. I note that many were on the shopping list of industry, so the Committee will examine them closely to make sure they also work for the consumer and for the long-term stability of the economy. One change in particular, on ringfencing, will worry those with stro…”

“The perception emerged, though, because the changes came quite late in the day, and presumably they were already in discussions with you at this point and so maybe had an idea of what the direction of travel was. It seems to me that they made an active decision to, again, try to meet the £9.9 billion headroom and keep …”

“It seems as though there is a wide range of fiscal rule possibilities that the market will swallow, but the argument put forward by this Government is that we need to have very strict adherence to relatively tight rules, at least when you are looking at the rolling side. Trying to make that work with this volatile envi…”

“Some might argue that that is the way to solve the problem.”

“You mentioned the significant impact it would have on PSNFL, but it would have a lesser impact if you moved to a different set of fiscal rules than public sector net worth. If you were to bring the water companies on to the balance sheet, you would say that the obvious thing to do is to switch to that role. But what wo…”

“Are our inflation expectations a contributing factor? When we had the spending review hearing, we learned that the forecast of real-terms increases in spending are based on inflation remaining at 2%. It frequently seems to be going higher than that, even though we do not expect it to, and Governments do not really want…”

“Is this the yellow and green lines?”

“In some senses this is going back to the first question, but I want to talk about why the price of UK Government debt is so high. It feels like at least one of the reasons is that the markets are starting to worry about the fact that every Government says, “This is what we’re going to do over five years, and all the go…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing the debate. Given all the Liberal Democrat interventions, it seems that we are firmly the party of beer and pubs.”

“My hon. Friends all made their contributions and they are all on the record; there is no disputing that we have won today—one-nil to us. Pubs are central to communities, as we have heard from others, and Carshalton and Wallington is no different. One of my favourite things about living in the Carshalton area is that we…”

“I rise to speak in favour of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), specifically new clauses 3 and 4. I will start by outlining why these fan-centric measures are important to this particular fan and why football is important to me. Football has been the most constant thing i…”

“Would the shadow Minister mind telling the House what these fashionable causes that football clubs should not speak about are?”

“The Government committed to one fiscal event a year in the name of economic stability, but by having an OBR forecast and these constraints, they had only one lever to pull: spending cuts. This time, disabled people paid the price, and the Government have since had to row back. Does the Government regret placing those r…”

“Sometimes they do not.”

“Yes. Just to confirm to the Committee, when is the end of the forecast period?”

“I totally accept that clean energy can generate growth, but sometimes there are opportunities in front of you, such as airport expansions, where you might feel, “In the name of growth, we are going to press this button, even though it may be detrimental to net zero ambitions.” If growth continues to be stagnant over a …”

“The Government probably need to be prepared to make the argument, because it is something that the public will not be used to. Finally, my colleague Rachel Blake spoke about the year-on-year losses that we have had so far. You have said that is okay because these are early days. How long could we tolerate year-on-year …”

“A lot of those are still about rates. There is a bit of inequality mixed in there, by making sure the per head living standards element goes up. What about the environment, for instance? There are probably lots of ways that you could achieve good growth that might be damaging to the Government’s long-term net zero poss…”