Speeches by Davies.

“I agree completely with my hon. Friend, who has once again made a very astute intervention. It marries very clearly with what we have seen in business confidence. He mentioned the record since the pandemic. Business confidence has tanked to low levels that we have not seen since the economy had to be shut down during t…”

“Once again, my right hon. Friend makes a valid point. As I have said already, I am not sure that this was intended. I do not think the Government understand what these measures will do to our communities, to the sectors I have outlined and to the businesses that I will speak about in a minute. The Minister will have to…”

“I am very grateful to the Minister for explaining all the things she has just set out, but I did not quite get an answer to the specific question of why it costs HMRC £4.5 million to execute this tax rise, which will not raise any money in the next year or the year after. Could she explain why this specific measure tha…”

“indicated dissent.”

“Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It is always a pleasure to see you in Committee and to serve under your chairmanship. On behalf of the Opposition, I rise to speak to new clauses 4 and 5, which stand in the name of my right hon. Friend, the shadow Chancellor. Before I do so, let me set the scene for clauses 7 to 12. W…”

“I rise to speak on behalf of the official Opposition on new clause 3, which stands in the name of the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride). Clauses 15 to 18 concern the taxation of the oil and gas industry, which meets 75% of the UK’s household and industrial energy needs, w…”

“I am happy to work with the Committee in whichever way it would prefer. We have access powers to the information, and clearly we would publish only what is sensible to publish, but we are happy to work with the Committee on that.”

“Later today, the House will vote on the Government’s £25 billion national insurance tax hike. To avoid any uncertainty when we vote, will the Minister confirm exactly which public sector organisations will be compensated?”

“There was so little information in that response—the civil service will be very proud of the Minister. He will not say who will be spared by the Chancellor’s tax raid, but we know that working people will be made to pay—the Office for Budget Responsibility has said so; the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said so; even…”

“It is a great pleasure to wind up the debate on behalf of the official Opposition. I pay tribute to and thank all colleagues from both sides of the House for their contributions. I will try to touch on some of their points as I go through. Just nine months ago, I opened the Second Reading of a Conservative national ins…”

“Absolutely. We all heard what the Chancellor said at the Confederation of British Industry conference. It is remarkable that the Prime Minister will not back up her words, and even more remarkable that the Chancellor herself would not back up her words today at Treasury questions. The British people see the Bill for wh…”

“There is really nothing to add to that. The hon. Gentleman made that point in his speech and at Treasury questions—it is a very important point. In just six months, we have hit the highest tax burden in history. Debt is up, with debt interest payments above £100 billion—for the first time ever—in every year of the fore…”

“I hope the British people are listening to this: none of those things. I remind the hon. Gentleman, although he was not here, that NHS spending increased by 45% in cash terms in the last Parliament under a Conservative Government. The issue is not spending—the Labour party will never get this—but reforming the NHS, as …”

“The point about the support that Germany brings is a really good one. Just to give you a flavour of what the Department already does and where we can build from, our teams are not just based in London; they are based right the way across the country and in the devolved nations. We have people who have worked in busines…”

“The only thing I would add is that we have already increased the resources for Companies House. They are now recruiting and growing their teams to strengthen and improve the quality of the register, because we know how important that is. Some of the changes have already been enacted, but some of it will be around the c…”

“As you know, there are multiple dimensions to economic security. One is just overdependence or overreliance on a single country, which can be an issue because of the potential hold-up problems. What we saw through covid in particular, but also in some of the consequential work from Brexit, was some of the brittleness o…”

“Amanda Brooks is the director general who is our trade lead now.”

“You have summarised it really well. Crawford was brought in in 2017, because, coming out of the European Union and the customs market, the UK Government and civil service did not have the capability and capacity to negotiate trade deals at that time. Crawford’s responsibility then was to build up the trade team. This i…”

“I had not really thought about the particular title, but the person who is responsible for building the capability and leading our negotiations is her.”

“On your broader point on trade, we know that all the evidence shows that as you increase the trade intensity in an economy, that helps drive productivity and growth. That has certainly been one of the consequences of reducing trade intensity with Europe. There has been a focus on how we can drive our exports, both thro…”