Speeches by Baldwin.

“One of the first acts of this Government was to take away the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners on incomes as low as £13,000 a year, including 44,000 who are—or were—terminally ill. Will the Secretary of State reassure all our constituents that in making these changes, she will not be going after those …”

“It was a wonderful answer and very well informed, but I do not think I heard whether, yes, the UK should go it alone, or, no, we should wait until the rest of the major competitors in this space go too. I just want a yes or no.”

“Are we in an okay position now? You mentioned the resilience and the fact that we have gone through all these different shocks and actually the banking system has come through them. There have been live stress tests. We have had the Silicon Valley Bank failing. We have heard regularly from Sam Woods that he is not runn…”

“I wanted to go back to the line of questioning from my colleague Rachel Blake MP about growth. We have heard from the Governor on several occasions that the UK’s growth rate started to achieve a much lower rate after the financial crisis, suggesting that there was something that happened at the financial crisis that ha…”

“The Business Secretary met recently in Japan with Fujitsu, which developed the Horizon system and has offered to contribute to the compensation for victims. Can the Minister tell the House how much the Secretary of State has asked it to contribute, so that taxpayers are not on the hook for £1 billion?”

“The Business Secretary, the Minister and the Chancellor have all said that they want growth, including in rural areas. I have searched high and low for business growth statistics since the Budget of broken promises, and I find that, in the last quarter, there has been a growth of 50% in the number of businesses that ar…”

“Was it after January?”

“I have so many questions. I will start with Aidene and try to get a sense of the timeline on all this, because I am a little bit confused. The Joe Garner review into the payment systems started under the previous Government, then underwent a process and was published by the current Government back in November, and it m…”

“Again looking at the Government press release that announced your abolition this morning, it said, “Regulation will be cut back,” economic growth will be boosted by your abolition, and more money will be put into “working people’s pockets.” I have to say—I may just be speaking for myself—I am worried about what we migh…”

“Can I say thank you? You had a lot of people trying to slow you down and have this not rolled out, and yet this has had a really beneficial impact on our constituents who were being scammed and a really beneficial impact in terms of their economic wellbeing. The UK is very much at the cutting edge in terms of payments.…”

“I would like to slightly shift the line of questioning to what you have achieved in terms of rolling out automatic push payment fraud reimbursement. Members of this Committee get lobbied as well, by the people who were concerned about the roll-out. In our published reports to you in the past, we have raised concerns ab…”

“You were not having one set of private conversations about, “We think we should do this”, while you made a public letter about, “These are the things we think the regulator could do to help”.”

“The headline today from the Government—and I am reading it verbatim—is, “Regulator axed as red tape is slashed to boost growth”. You could have put this in your letter, couldn’t you, if you think it is such a good thing now?”

“If you believe all those things today, Mr Geale, why were they not in your letter to the Prime Minister after the summit on how regulators could help growth?”

“How recent was it?”

“That there was a potential for this happening and that No. 10 and the Chancellor were looking at the number of financial services regulators. When did you become aware of that? It does not have to be the hour of the day.”

“To clarify, you said, “We were aware”. Could you say the moment when you first became aware?”

“To confirm, in the national payments vision published last November, 2024, you were named as being part of that vision; then, within a few months, you are gone?”

“When was that announced that you heard it, Mr Geale?”

“When did you get the call?”