Speeches by Jones.

“I think we should always look at what we are spending taxpayers’ money on, whether it is lost revenue or direct spending. We did not do a tax benefit review in the spending review, but my colleague James Murray, who does tax policy for us in the Treasury and with HMRC, is looking at these issues, and that will ultimate…”

“AME assumptions are based on the OBR forecasting the demand of any spend, and there was not an OBR forecast with this spending review because it was not a fiscal event. That is why we did not have an AME forecast. We do not set AME budgets at the spending review. The next time that will happen will be at the Budget at …”

“The figure that we have published is the total figure that includes technical efficiency savings and then reprioritisation. So we have the total figures, which we have published. We have the assessment.”

“Each Department obviously did a different amount of work, so we would have to ask the Departments to offer up that detail.”

“It is still an overall saving because it is a demand-led spending commitment where we have to give money to the Department. A small example, but big for the Departments, is that the Law Officers’ Departments have used digital tools and stopped using human translation services for some of their translation services. The…”

“Another example is level 7 apprenticeship funding for people that had prior qualifications—we have stopped funding those apprenticeships.”

“The zero-based review process was, yes, looking at things like the NCS you want to do, but it was also looking at savings, efficiencies and productivity that we wanted them to make—it was all kind of in the same thing.”

“I can give you a couple of other examples. In the NHS, the use of temporary agency staff has been borne down on significantly and money saved in doing so.”

“I will give you one example, and maybe then, with your permission, talk about the broader process they went through. There was the National Citizen Service in DCMS, which I think David Cameron set up as Prime Minister. Our view and the view of the Department was that it was not really delivering on the youth strategy o…”

“Very specifically, Departments have to have the right capability in place to administer these financial transactions. It will not be me or any of my other political colleagues going around the country doing deals. It is essentially going to be bankers and those with commercial finance expertise within these public fina…”

“It helps the Department to do a range of different things to try to drive as much capacity as possible. We have obviously increased the capital grant through the affordable homes programme very significantly, which is where the Department literally just pays for houses to be built—and that is often the best way of gett…”

“It seems that I have a list of bids for place-based business case pilots, which we will take away and consider. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight why this issue is important. When the Government are spending a lot of money on a particular thing, including through industrial policy or defence spending, we …”

“I hope that Stepping Hill will be able to bid into the new, longer-term maintenance fund so that we can get work done more quickly than it has been done in the past. On the place-based business case pilots under the Green Book review, we have not yet made any decisions about where we will pilot them or how, so we now h…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for raising the Ely junction. The great thing about the multi-year spending review in the 10-year strategy is that the Department for Transport and its partners are now able to plan ahead, so I encourage him to talk to Transport Ministers about that particular project. He is right to say that we …”

“That was a stream of slightly incoherent questions, if I may say so. I point the hon. Gentleman to the document that we have published today, which does mention Scotland quite a few times. He says that this Labour Government have not delivered anything for Scotland. I will just point him to the largest real-terms incre…”

“I agree very much with my hon. Friend. Next week I will be meeting finance Ministers from the devolved Governments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. We will put forward today’s update on our infrastructure strategy and seek to partner with them as best we can to deliver for people and places across the whole of …”

“I politely point the hon. Member to the fact that previously there were two functions in Government, and I have closed both of them and created one, so we are actually down by one. He asks about the devolved Governments, which have devolved responsibilities. We will not interfere with the devolution settlement, but I t…”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the challenges that I learned on coming into government is that the last Government did not even ask what the maintenance backlog was in certain Departments. There was not a clear set of data that told us which assets the Government own and the quality or state of them, so we …”

“I am sure that the hon. Gentleman makes a very good case, which Ministers in the Department for Transport will need to answer, but I am pleased to know that the Liberal Democrats think maintenance is sexy after all.”

“I agree with my hon. Friend on our extremely ambitious plans for council houses—or social and affordable houses, as we call them now. He will know that I, too, grew up in a council flat. I now represent the constituency of Bristol North West, and over 20,000 people in the city of Bristol are waiting for secure housing.…”