Speeches by Baldwin.

“Whatever our views on the different flavours of local government, surely we in this House can all agree that good local services are delivered when there are excellent, hard-working local councillors who have been democratically elected. At the moment in counties up and down the land, county councillors are campaigning…”

“May I start by thanking the Minister for advance sight of his statement? Before I get into my questions, can we take a moment to thank every postman and postwoman up and down this country for their hard work, particularly at this time of year? In all the challenging weather, they are out there putting letters through e…”

“Some of the most successful small and medium-sized businesses, which truly think long term, are owned by families, so why does the Secretary of State think that it will help his long-term growth mission for the Government to start taxing those businesses when they get passed on to the next generation?”

“One of the ingredients for a successful high street is having a post office in the mix. The Government have inherited a network of 11,500 post offices, and that number has been stable since 2010. Will the Minister commit to supporting high streets by maintaining the scale of the post office network in this Parliament?”

“It sounds as though there was a step change and that your trajectory is a flatter one going forward. You had a loss in your accounts because of the pension scheme accruals. Dame Meg and I are both trustees of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund.”

“It has been a really good time for the markets, so I was a bit surprised to see that you had had actuarial losses on the FCA pension scheme. Should we be worried?”

“We should not be worried.”

“We look forward to hearing that.”

“Very quickly, because I think it was a surprise to the Committee when we took evidence from the consumer groups last week. We asked them if they had seen any impact from the implementation of the consumer duty, and they had not. Yet you have referenced it many times in your testimony today. Where is the disconnect ther…”

“This is all motherhood and apple pie, but I am not hearing specific metrics on which you would evaluate the chief executive in that discussion. What I was listening for but did not hear was how your metrics are going to shift with the new remit letter from the Chancellor.”

“These are all metrics on which you do evaluate the chief executive.”

“Has absorbing that number of extra people over the last few years been straightforward—onboarding that many staff? Have there been any particular areas where it has been hard to recruit?”

“What is the FCA policy on working from home? How many people would be working from home on any given day?”

“Is that 40% in the office?”

“It is not even half the time that people are required to be in the office.”

“What sorts of things are you looking at when you do that?”

“Is that now enough people, or are you planning to increase headcount on a similar trajectory in the future?”

“In terms of resources, would you say the 30% increase is directly down to the additional responsibilities that you have been given by successive Governments and Parliaments?”

“Can we focus a bit on the organisation itself for a moment? You have increased your costs to the industry and your headcount by about 30% over the last two years.”

“Mr Alder, do you do a performance review of your chief executive on a regular basis?”