Speeches by Dean.

“I thank the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) for an excellent opening speech. It almost made me feel like putting down my own speech, because I thought there was nothing more I could contribute. I thank her so much for that introduction. It is worth saying that the people who will be speaking in this deba…”

“In answers to questions so far, the Secretary of State seems to have dismissed the threat of the US trade negotiations to the safety of our children. I am sure he has seen the abandonment of content moderation on social media platforms and heard what Trump, J. D. Vance and Musk have said about free speech in our countr…”

“But will we have those figures in the autumn?”

“The OBR play a big role in our national debate now, with their forecasts influencing an awful lot. They have come under a bit of scrutiny for that recently—not necessarily for their independence or the quality of their work, but for the reliance on their forecasts alone to dictate Britain’s economic policy. Do you have…”

“Chancellor, it sounds like we do not have the fully worked-up plans or evidence yet. How can you be so sure that these reforms will work, and to the extent proposed by your Government? Yesterday, the economists were very firm that they think this may work at the margins—that it is necessary work—but that the impact on …”

“Ms Tinsley, could you give us some more insight into how you think people will be supported back into work by these reforms?”

“Finally, more work is going to be done by the OBR over the summer to assess this. Is it your view that it will become much clearer by the autumn, when we get the next forecast, how many families may end up in poverty as a result of this and how many people will be getting back into work? Will we have figures at that po…”

“I think many people would support that. I have some fantastic charities working in my own area, trying to get people with disabilities into the workplace and keep them there. That is a noble effort, but I think people’s concern is that there might be some who fall through the cracks or face unnecessary hardship as a re…”

“I believe that some analysis was done of people who were passing the assessment criteria, how close they were and so on. Would that also give you an indication of what percentage of people on PIP would never realistically be able to go back into work? Do you have a figure for that as well?”

“Many PIP claimants are already in work, and others are probably unable to work permanently. Of the 800,000 who look set to lose out on their PIP claims—[Interruption.] Saved by the bell! I will complete the question: of the 800,000 who are set to lose out, what proportion would you expect to get back into work? You hav…”

“The stated purpose of the reforms is to get more people back into work.”

“I think there is consensus that change needs to happen, but I guess what people are questioning is the timing and scale. You commissioned Sir Charlie Mayfield to do a review of that, but the spring statement measures come ahead of it. I am sure we will come on to address that. The main driver of the saving seems to be …”

“Okay. Let’s get on to the substance of it. When we were talking to the economists yesterday, they seemed to come to the conclusion that the welfare reforms were driven by a desire to balance the books more than to get people into work. I know that that the Government’s view is that it is about getting people into work,…”

“Moving on to the welfare reforms, I would like to ask a clarifying question about timelines. I am not sure whether Ms Tinsley or Mr Macfarlane might be able to help me with the dates on which the OBR say they received the packages from the Treasury. I think there was 5 March, then 12 March was the final package, and th…”

“Final question on this: are you at all concerned that you might have set a precedent in having arrived at the same figure? The fiscal rules are already pretty hard—they are ironclad, you can’t breach them—and now you have this surplus figure anchored in people’s minds. If we end up at £8 billion surplus next time, will…”

“I can see Mr Macfarlane is keen to come in.”

“I guess others would also say that you set that figure last time, and it had to be adjusted six months later. You heard from Mr Glen earlier that the tariff situation may already have eliminated that headroom again this time, so there are big question marks over whether that is a sufficient level of headroom in these v…”

“Because it was within the parameters?”

“We will come on to that. I am going to have to accept for a moment that we did accidentally end up within £2 million, but you did say that you wanted to target round about the same figure. Can you explain your reasoning for that?”

“We are going to come on to welfare reforms in more detail later, but that feels a little bit undermined by having a whole package of reforms announced and then this extra £500 million coming in late in the day. That feels like it was done as a balancing figure. Are you disputing that?”