Speeches by Dean.

“Do you not accept that some people might see a review of those mass redress events as watering down protections for consumers?”

“Would you be able to comment on the role of claims management companies?”

“Many of you were listening to the last panel. Industry put it a little more delicately than I am about to, but I think I heard them say that politicians and the media, and by extension consumers, overreact to moments of consumer harm, and that we need to accept harm as a consequence of risk. Who has a view on that?”

“I want to pick up on something that both of you have touched on. Ms Concha, you spoke about how we need to give confidence to the demand side for growth, and you mentioned some of these mass redress events as well. What impact have things such as PPI and the potential ruling on motor finance had on consumer demand?”

“If trust is so low, what do you think we need to see come out of the potential reforms to the Financial Ombudsman Service? We have seen these reforms spoken about in the context of—”

“ What is the reason for it being phased over such a long time? I appreciate the need to get things right and that you are doing tests to make sure of that, but why can’t that happen at a much faster pace?”

“ We have talked quite a bit about digital capabilities already, but I want to move on to Making Tax Digital—a service that has been around for some time but is still being rolled out. I think we read in some of your documentation that you want to roll it out to income tax from 2026. Could you give us a review of w…”

“ In your product experimentation with AI, have you considered the role for email? I was struck the other day when I got a letter from HMRC saying that I could only really call a phone number. I appreciate that a chatbot might be looked at too, but both phone calls and chatbots require you to be present for the ent…”

“ Just to follow on from the two lines of questioning so far, you mentioned that you have data on farming businesses and then separate data about who claimed for estates. Would it be possible to make a formal definition if you dug into the datasets that you have, or would you need to go and gather new data to be ab…”

“ Do you think that might be related to the registration with HMRC of future tax advisers? Might we need to have stronger regulation in the future to prevent this sort of thing happening again? I accept that, as you say, some will have been aware of what they were getting involved in, but how much do we need t…”

“ You mentioned that some people may not realise what is done in their name. Something else that came up in the Budget review is revisiting the loan charge scandal. I don’t know whether you want to add anything for the record about the new review, or indeed HMRC’s role in the previous review. Do you have any reflec…”

“ The Budget contains measures on registering those providing tax advice, so I just wanted to get your thoughts. Could you outline what the need for that is, and whether you think the proposed action will be sufficient to tackle rogue advisers?”

“ My final question relates to that, actually. Obviously, there is still scope for human error; there are still human beings inputting stuff into the software. Just how transformational has it been so far? Has it provided you with marginal gains, or have they been substantial?”

“I want to dig a bit more into the cross-departmental co-operation piece, in particular with the FCDO. Could you explain in a bit more detail what that relationship is like? Specifically, is it top-down, where the instruction comes and you work out how to implement, or is it that you provide recommendations and they sig…”

“A fantastic local social enterprise in my constituency has been helping adults with disabilities back into work. It recently set up a café that is run entirely by adults with learning disabilities. How does the Department plan to take evidence from innovative organisations of that kind, and will the Secretary of State …”

“On the sanctions list specifically, how much of that is driven by your intelligence versus what the Foreign Office wants to do?”

“When you said that you were playing catch-up in the heat of the crisis, does that mean that sometimes decisions were being made and instructions were being given that you did not feel were implementable? Was it perhaps political decisions being made where you think that, if we had had a more intuitive conversation, suc…”

“This is a bad day for human rights, but for the Hongkongers living in my constituency it is a frightening day. Beyond the broad reassurances that the Minister has already given, what specific action will the Government take to protect Hongkongers living in the UK from state surveillance?”

“I would like to move on to the labour market data. I apologise in advance to the Governor because I know he preceded his comments on the Mansion House speech with “oh dear”. That was his phrase when we were talking about this section. Before we get into the data issues, can you just explain to me more broadly what impa…”

“Yes, I understand that point well. My dad was a scaffolder. He is out of work at the moment awaiting treatment. He would love to get back into the workplace, but he is not able to. Equally, we hear stories about GPs who have built equity in their homes, decided to move to the south coast and have no intention of return…”