Speeches by Baldwin.

“Could you just answer the specific question I had was, which was: are you still—”

“I do not want to hear about the previous Government.”

“Chancellor, in the run-up to the general election, you said that you had no plans for tax rises beyond what was in your manifesto, that you would focus on growth and that growth was the way in which you were going to get more tax revenue coming in. You have now put together two of the biggest tax-raising Budgets in UK …”

“Which has been discredited by the Office for Budget Responsibility.”

“It was not caused—”

“So you chose not to put any new growth measures in this Budget, or are you still—”

“Mr Bowler, I have a technical point on the business rates questions I was asking the Chancellor earlier. The Treasury website gives some worked examples of how the transitional relief will be applied. That is a maximum cap versus the 40% discount that was in place. The letter that has gone out from the Ministry of Hous…”

“We will get into measures in a moment, but last year I asked you about the way in which you are implementing all the article IV recommendations from the IMF. You are basically going through the whole list of recommendations and ticking them off one by one. Last year, I asked you if you were planning any overhaul of cou…”

“Chancellor, in your Budget you say: “The high street will benefit from permanently lower business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure”. I think you will have heard that the reality is that a lot of high street businesses are looking at the detail and feel that they will struggle to survive with the higher rates b…”

“Can I urge you to look at this again, Chancellor? UKHospitality would dispute that. They think there will be a 15% hike on average for pubs. I will just leave that out there.”

“Do you accept, Chancellor, that your revealed preference now, in terms of the two Budgets you have brought in, is that you hike taxes a lot, and that the speculation—and the impact of the speculation—in the run-up to this Budget had a real-world impact on people’s decisions in mortgages, pensions, and a range of differ…”

“Yes, and they are saying that the average pub will get that cap.”

“That is what they are saying.”

“Do you want to have a stab at estimating what the monetary policy equivalent impact of that relaxation would be?”

“We will see? That sounds like you don’t know; you are putting your finger in the air.”

“Okay. I am sure we will be coming back to this. I have one last question for Sir Dave Ramsden, which is linked to the FPC’s decision to relax bank capital by 13%. As Yuan Yang was asking what the equivalent impact of quantitative tightening is in terms of percentage monetary tightening, could you summarise what assessm…”

“Ms Lombardelli, the way the story reads is that you are putting a lot of money into new computers and databases and that that is being funded by a voluntary redundancy programme. Is that a fair characterisation?”

“This is the real-time gross settlement system, yes?”

“What sort of roles are being made redundant?”

“My question is about the Bernanke review; I understand that you are in charge of its implementation, Ms Lombardelli. The review was initiated and completed by Dr Bernanke after the court was concerned about the way that the Bank dealt with the very severe inflation that we experienced in this country after Russia’s ill…”