Speeches by Dean.

“Do we think that some sort of correction is inevitable over the medium run, even if it does not happen, say, this year?”

“Just to follow on that, obviously the threat to the independence in the US came about as a result of political change, and you said you feel quite secure in the UK right now. Over a five or 10-year horizon do you feel it looks secure, or has that started to become questionable?”

“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…”

“I am not talking about specific parties, just that in general there has been a mood change across Europe and across the western world. Lots of institutions are breaking down. Do you see that as a potential threat to the Bank?”

“I think this House has grown tired of the Government’s insistence on framing this as a mere planning application —as a quasi-judicial process about which national Government can do nothing. That is simply not the case. This is a test of this Government’s resolve to stand up to the threat that China poses to the UK. The…”

“As has been mentioned, in its manifesto Labour committed itself to reforming the business rates system, and the Red Book for the Budget referred to “permanently lower business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure”. That will have given business owners the impression that their bills would be lower. The Government’…”

“Another day, another U-turn. Have you ever seen a new Government so lacking in conviction? When they announced their plan for change, I do not think anybody in this place realised that it was a plan to change every single one of their policies. This is becoming a shambles. The Liberal Democrats lack no conviction on th…”

“There are rumours circulating around Westminster of a Bobby about to join the Reform party. I just want to clarify that it is not me. I am staying put. I quite enjoy watching the numbers to the right of me dwindle. We talk a lot in this place about the Home Office, immigration and asylum. Mostly, we talk about people’s…”

“I thank the Committee for its investigation into this important topic. The Chair spoke a bit about the shocking developments in the supply of drugs into prisons, but can he expand on the demand for drugs, and on the availability of rehabilitation services and other forms of support for addicts in prisons?”

“The data is here, but a bit of the system fell over.”

“Does it come back to how these reliefs are articulated in the first place? Speaking to one of the concerns that Yuan Yang MP was raising, it sometimes feels like the take-up of reliefs is much more strongly correlated with the size of your finance department and how clever you can be at accessing the relief, rather tha…”

“Can I just clarify that? You ultimately want to have sovereign cloud capacity without having to be reliant on third-party contractors such as AWS. A lot of people were quite shocked, when they heard about the outage, that HMRC data has been held in West Virginia and not here in the UK.”

“Quite a lot of this is going to be originating elsewhere, outside of your platforms. We have heard evidence from the FCA and others in other hearings about the co-operation of larger tech companies. Do you have any issues with your relationship with tech companies? I know that, for instance, HMRC was affected by one of…”

“Thank you for clarifying that. I am going to move on to scams, frauds and cyber-attacks, which we have already talked a bit about. John-Paul Marks, you said that that is the thing that keeps you up at night. In the last oral evidence session, we heard about some cyber-attacks. Can you give us any updates on what has ha…”

“So you do not think that it is a particular concern if there seems to be a concentration of who applies and gets access to this relief. That huge volume of relief going to just five companies, for example, does not flag any concerns to you. That would be normal because these are the implementers in those industries.”

“Is that a surprise? These enablers were recognised as being a problem and the UK is home to quite a big industry of enablers.”

“You mentioned in your answer there the patent box, and you said that you had had a good return on investment. You have probably seen TaxWatch’s analysis of patent box tax relief. It points to facts such as 41% of the relief having been claimed by just five companies, and a large chunk of that by GSK alone. It then goes…”

“I thank the Leader of the House for his statement. The whole House wants to get the Bill right, and if a delay is what is required, I think the House will support that. I am glad that the Government have had the humility to withdraw it from tomorrow’s business, even at this late stage, in order to get it right. However…”

“I am exasperated by the Government’s response to this urgent question. They are treating this development as a mere wrinkle in a bureaucratic planning matter, which is simply not the case. If this embassy is granted, it will be one of the largest and most prestigious embassies held by any country in Europe, and that ha…”