Speeches by Baldwin.

“Will the Culture Secretary welcome the news that, thanks to levelling-up funding, Malvern theatres in the west midlands will be expanding? Planning permission was granted last week, which will give lots of young people an opportunity to get jobs in the creative industries. When the new theatre has been built, will she …”

“ The National Audit Office says that there is lots of that happening.”

“ I think they are telling you that there is wholesale fraud going on, aren’t they?”

“ That sounds like fertile ground in terms of the area that Rachel Blake MP was asking about and that, I think, Lucy Rigby has some further questions about.”

“ Very quickly, if we were ever in a situation where we had to implement something like that again, at short notice, in order to prop up the economy, how would you do things differently?”

“ I hope, Sir Jim, you have left behind some institutional wisdom.”

“ You chose speed over perfection.”

“ To go back to the question on social media strategies, Ms Lloyd, do you know if you are on TikTok or not? I just want a yes or no.”

“ It is more about the fraud that is being committed where people are pretending to be UK-based sellers.”

“ How many people have downloaded it now?”

“ Could you tell us how the app downloading take-up is going?”

“ I do not know whether all my colleagues do yet.”

“ Obviously, a key part of your goal, which I think is still your strategic plan—is to move people much more on to online interactions—is the app. I think you shared with us some statistics earlier this year about the take-up of the app. The app seems to be quite consumer friendly. I think I follow these things rel…”

“ So the Minister could have overruled that before it happened, last time?”

“ I think we have had two instances of this. I wondered whether you could share with us how you think having a Minister on the Board is going to affect a decision like that, which you clearly took operationally independently, but with which Ministers did not feel comfortable.”

“ I know colleagues will have a lot more questions on Making Tax Digital and so on. However I wanted to go back to the questions the Chair had about the Minister on the HMRC Board and revisit that saga we had earlier this year when HMRC turned off the helpline. My understanding is that the Chancellor at t…”

“Q6. Last weekend, during Storm Bert, Tenbury Wells was flooded for the second time this year. It is a question of when, not if, the town will flood again. The situation is even more devastating for residents because the town has a fully developed flood defence plan that is partly funded. The Budget carried forward £2.4…”

“ So we do not need to wait until next year’s road map to get some data out of you. Turning to another aspect of online—the sale of goods online through the likes of Vinted, which the Committee discussed in the previous Parliament—very small sellers in online marketplaces were inadvertently threatened with being ca…”

“ You must already have an idea of what the numbers are now and what is in your plan.”

“ I think what the Committee would love to know is your strategic plan for how you expect take-up to evolve, what your numbers are today, and then we can keep holding you accountable on that front.”