Speeches by Dean.

“I want to move on to your modelling of the Government’s changes to national insurance contributions. We spoke about the labour market uncertainties a bit earlier, and it relates to that. You have static yield changing really significantly over the course of the forecast period. How confident are you in that modelling—p…”

“Moving on to investment spending, there was not a lot of data about where the additional capital spend is going. Given how much of it is front-loaded as well, that is leaving with us lots of questions. In your engagements with the Treasury, did you get better insight about where this near-term capital spending might be…”

“Just thinking about the economy as a whole and the readiness for this huge injection in the next couple of years of capital spending whether or not we have the labour force, the resources and the shovel-ready projects ready to go, did you factor that into your forecasting as well? Do you have a confidence level about t…”

“I have just one final follow-up question. Is there a fear then that perhaps this could drive up the cost of some of these projects if that is what will happen in the short run? Instead of spreading that capital spend out over the forecast period, by front-loading it we might end up with more expensive infrastructure de…”

“That links a little bit to my next question. Mr Johnson, you said that the winners from this Budget might be users of public services, but would it be more accurate to say it is the users of the health service and potentially the education system? If you are looking at the future budgets, potentially things such as the…”

“One of them indicates that the Budget is redistributive. The other one does not. In fact, everybody loses out. Who is right?”

“I hope that this is a quick question. I have a couple of charts in front of me. One is the Treasury’s distributional analysis and the other one is the Resolution Foundation’s one.”

“I accept that the difference that public services will make in people’s lives is going to be difficult to measure and people will come to different conclusions, but the employer national insurance contribution side should be more clear. Do you think that they should have included that in their distributional analysis, …”

“To quickly bottom out a comment that you made, Paul Johnson, and following on from Yuan’s comments earlier, when we spoke to the OBR this morning we talked about potentially getting those economically inactive people back into work and that having an impact. The OBR’s conclusion was that, if we did manage to do that, a…”

“Just quickly on that point about people potentially taking up self-employment, if that started becoming common across relatively low-wage jobs, they have the potential to miss out on some of the new workers’ rights that have been issued as well. Is that something that we should be keeping an eye on as a Committee to ma…”

“10. What steps her Department is taking to help tackle persistent school absences among young carers.”

“One thing that might be driving absences from schools for young carers is long-term mental health conditions. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says that as many as one in five young carers could be suffering from long-term mental health conditions. Can the Minister explain what measures the Department …”

“The first Budget of a new Government is always significant, but one can rarely have been set in such tricky circumstances. This one comes following a series of major shocks—some of them external and unpredictable, as Opposition Members have said, such as the covid pandemic and the energy crisis, but some of them down t…”

“10. What recent assessment he has made of the level of threat to UK democracy posed by the Chinese Communist party.”

“Thousands of Hongkongers have made my local community their home under the British national overseas visa scheme, but too many of them still face the threat of surveillance, harassment, and intimidation by the Chinese state. Will the Government confirm that they have raised the issue of transnational repression in conv…”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) on securing this debate. I associate myself with his comments about how the previous Government should be congratulated on honouring the BNO scheme in the first place. My borough of Sutton is home to more than 5,000 people on the BNO scheme. I repres…”

“Colleagues have outlined the scale of the crisis, so I shall focus on a story of one of my constituents in Carshalton and Wallington. She was told that she had to repay more than £2,300 in carer’s allowance over- payments. This constituent already makes huge sacrifices to keep her family afloat, while caring for her di…”

“I have enjoyed this debate, the maiden speeches and hearing about all the local successes that added up to our national success at this year’s Olympic and Paralympic games. We might be a small island, but we punch above our weight. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon East (Natasha Irons) talked about the Paralympic c…”

“In my constituency of Carshalton and Wallington, Scope research estimates that disabled households face bills of up to £1,500 a month more than the average household. We also know that disabled households are much less likely to claim the benefits that they are entitled to. Has the Government Equalities Office made any…”

“1. What discussions she has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential impact of the cost of energy on disabled people.”