Speeches by Dean.

“12. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of research and development defence spending on the economy.”

“The Minister will know that investment in defence R&D has tremendous impacts on the UK economy, not only through jobs and crowding in private investment, but through the spill-over effects of new technologies helping Britain to prosper. Is it therefore not clear that if the Government were to issue defence hypothec…”

“I associate myself with the comments made by the Leader of the House about Holocaust Memorial Day and the tributes he paid to the people we have lost. Last weekend, all the plotting and deceit finally reached a climax. I have to say that the man from the north who I wanted to win that battle did not quite make it. Stil…”

“Mr Bland, do you want to add any comments? Also, could you give us some insight to the other side of the coin about borrowing? Have you seen any trends in defaults or arrears?”

“In terms of defaults, have you seen any change in that trend? Are people defaulting on their debt more often than they used to?”

“We will come back to savings later on, but for now, thank you, Chair.”

“It is to Ms Harrison first, please.”

“Mr Bland, there has obviously been quite a lot of talk about the financial inclusion strategy being released recently, and you mentioned that that is a core concern for credit unions. Do you feel that you have been properly included in the financial inclusion strategy development process? Similarly, do you want the Gov…”

“Ms Harrison, in your earlier answer you speculated about what doubling the size of the sector might mean. We are 18 months into this Government. By now, I would have expected them to have defined that so we know what we are working towards. I also know that in the Treasury’s financial services growth and competitive st…”

“Ms Harrison, you also mentioned the role of legislation in one of your earlier answers. When we had the FCA chief executive, Nikhil Rathi, in he said he did not feel legislation has been prioritised. He said some bits have been waiting 17 years to be reviewed. In particular, he said there is stuff relating to the Build…”

“Coming back to savings, we spoke to the Bank of England about the elevated level of aggregate savings. There are all sorts of theories about why that might be, with the succession of shocks to the economy and so on. Are there any trends that you spot among your members? Are there differences between different groups of…”

“When we looked into ISAs, we received evidence, particularly from Skipton Building Society, about the potential damage that the reforms could do. The limit has now been cut, but there is the extra provision of people over 65 being able to maintain their savings in cash ISAs. Can you tell us where the Building Society A…”

“Is it because you realised you had a stock of accounts where people were over 65, and if they made it in line with the retirement age that would not have worked out as well? Was that part of your discussions?”

“Moving on to the cash-like assets held in stocks and shares and the plan to charge interest on it, what discussions have you had with the Treasury about this? More broadly, it seems like the picture is getting a lot more complicated. Do you have any fears in terms of customer take-up as a result of that?”

“I will come back to that latter point in a moment. Just to go back a step, you said, “As a result of the engagement”, but we were a little confused about why the age of 65 was landed upon. It is not in line with the retirement age. Do you think that that happened to allow more capital to be available to building societ…”

“Ten years ago, this place introduced legislation preventing banks from applying tax deductions after paying compensation for wrongdoing. Now lenders are set to pay out billions of pounds in connection with the motor finance scandal, but they will be able to reduce their tax bills because most of those companies have ch…”

“Before I begin, I have to pull the Leader of the House up, because he did not respond to one of the critical points that the shadow Leader of the House made. I, for one, would like to hear what the Leader of the House has to say about the feud in the Beckham family. St Helier hospital is older than the NHS itself, is s…”

“I welcome many of the measures in this White Paper. More regulation will help, but—let’s be honest—it does not get to the heart of the problem: the failure of the privatisation of the water industry. We need to be talking about ownership, but that is absent from the White Paper. I have heard the conversations in the Ch…”

“I am going to move on to talk of an AI bubble. I do not think you use that term in your stability report. You talk about concerns over materially stretched valuations and you compare that to the dotcom bubble. Can you explain to the Committee what you mean by materially stretched, and how do you calculate that? How do …”

“I saw a JP Morgan report a few months ago that speculated about the cost of AI infrastructure—obviously you have to physically build things and there are energy costs associated with it as well—versus the potential revenues from AI. It was saying that a company such as Apple might have to charge $300 a month for an iPh…”