Speeches by Dean.

“In saying that, do you not accept that while that would suit the businesses and most of their customers, it might be quite exclusionary for some potential consumers?”

“That is not necessarily true, because if it is a small proportion of your customer base, you might be prepared to relinquish that for the hassle that comes with it. That small proportion actually is quite meaningful and important, and who gets excluded counts. What would you say to that?”

“We will probably come on to definitions about what essential goods are later on. I accept what you were saying, Mr Lowman. I have statistics here about how 98% of small business owners said that if a customer needs to pay cash, they would not refuse them. That is probably because they are not in a position to turn away…”

“Essentially, we should leave it to market forces and if the consumers start demanding it less, then retailers should be able to stop?”

“I will give you a hypothetical example, where we are in a small village in which there is one person who is severely disabled and really needs to use cash in their transactions, and they no longer have access to this business because it is just one customer.”

“I thank the Minister for his answer, but I would like to focus on the age differential in the rates. He will be aware that people under 25 receive a different rate of universal credit. The Government announced that they will try to abolish the age differential for the national living wage. If it could also be abolished…”

“11. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of the rates of universal credit.”

“A constituent who is now a prisoner of HMP Coldingley wrote to me recently about the appalling conditions in his prison. He spoke about the prevalence of drugs, violence, discrimination and denial of access to healthcare. In his most recent letter to me, he said that the conditions had got so bad that he made an attemp…”

“What would you say to people who say that the easiest way to ease the burden on firms is to stop these mass redress events happening in the first place and that there needs to be much more proactive prevention of these kinds of instances in the first place?”

“Mr Braviner Roman, I was struck by you explaining about the burden on firms with these customer complaints. At the same time we also have a consultation going on about reform of Financial Ombudsman Services. Do you think that these reforms have been prompted by the burden on firms? Does it still have the rights of the …”

“No, on the DCAs prior to your judgment.”

“Before that point, was the FCA not alert enough to it soon enough, or were firms behaving badly—”

“Sorry, if I could just come in, should firms not have already known that this was not a good activity to be undertaking?”

“I know others want to come in on this. Mr Rathi, we spoke a bit earlier about risk and the need to become more comfortable with it. Sometimes firms will fail and that might be a risky investment, and sometimes you might lose money for other reasons, too. In these particular cases, is this not something that a consumer …”

“Can I push you on the courts point, though? I have some comparisons here about the level of compensation you can get by going through the FCA and the FOS, and then via the courts. It is more than double each time. There is a big fear that, with this long period of time that firms are being given to respond by, many cou…”

“Before I address capital gains tax directly, I will make a few short remarks about the state of the national conversation about tax more generally, which I think is highly relevant. I note that tax is always something to be “hit by” in politics—it is violent; we are “hammered” by it—so the debate ends up focusing on wh…”

“Let us pause on the Court of Appeal bit for a moment. We will come back to that. Specifically in relation to DCAs, you have taken the decision to do that long pause, and that pause looks set to be extended. What should claimants do meanwhile? Can you explain to us what preparation you have in place already for moving o…”

“On this conversation about the British public’s confidence in the financial industry, I know that some of it is based on financial education and other bits will be about people’s inherent risk appetites. Some of it is fundamentally trusting whether the financial products being served by the industry are things they can…”

“2. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of the condition of prisons.”

“Deidre Cartwright, I was quite struck by what you said at the beginning about 4.1 million people potentially being affected by having their access to money restricted by their partners. To begin with, for the record, could you explain what economic abuse is, how widespread it is in this country, if any particular group…”