Speeches by Baldwin.

“You have had to make further changes to address this. What lessons can you learn about the whole communication around this episode and the communication of what you thought was going to be the appropriate level of relief that you announced in the Budget?”

“Do you agree that it was a political disaster, effectively, wasn’t it?”

“So the challenging backdrop is higher volatility in the gilt market?”

“I think, Minister, you would have to accept that it is a political problem when you then have to come back and make the changes that you did in that statement a month after the Budget. I will move on to the point I think you made in that statement in the Commons: that you thought the transitional relief announced in th…”

“Do you accept the rebuke from the UK Statistics Authority that you could have been clearer in the messaging, and that you could have said that it wasn’t just going to be permanently lower and that there were these other things happening?”

“Thank you very much. Perhaps, Mr Canty, you would acknowledge that we are very dependent on the “kindness of strangers”, to use the famous words of Mark Carney about issuing gilts. What do you see internationally? Have there been any shifts in the buyers of gilts?”

“What I am hearing is that you thought that the £4.3 billion was going to be satisfactory to address this political issue, which was obviously looming in your inbox in the run-up to the Budget. Do you accept that, in terms of the rhetoric—Mr Dean has referred to this—what people in the sector heard was that we were movi…”

“This is obviously a very technical area. I want to focus my questions on the political decision making. You were appointed on 1 September last year. How quickly was it flagged to you that there was this issue coming down the line—that, according to the Valuation Office Agency, there was a 32% revaluation in the pub sec…”

“That the Cabinet Office did. Were they all in the Treasury, or were any of them in No. 10?”

“You are obviously issuing a lot of gilts. What changes have you seen in who the end purchasers of those gilts are?”

“Are you seeing hedge funds or investment banks being bigger players in the gilt market?”

“Ms Pulay, you mentioned the challenging backdrop. Could you elaborate on what makes the backdrop challenging?”

“Were any of them in No. 10?”

“But it will still be an independent body doing the March forecast?”

“No, but it has an impact on the gilt market, doesn’t it? Presumably, you work closely with the Bank of England in feeding into it about what size of quantitative tightening you think the market can absorb on top of your own issuance.”

“If I may, Chair, I have a couple more questions on this subject, even though we seem to have asked a lot already. There were 60 people interviewed in the inquiry that you did—”

“If I understand correctly, the Treasury has allocated a specific sum, which was set due to affordability rather than to aim for a particular number of homes. Were there any particular areas of contention between the two Departments at the time of the spending review?”

“I am sure that you would not have allocated £39 billion without an expectation of a certain number of houses to be delivered.”

“There will be questions on that later but, in terms of more housing, have you set specific targets for each year? What kind of metrics does the Treasury have to evaluate how well the housing Department is delivering for the money that you have allocated?”

“Can I ask the Economic Secretary for her perspective? In terms of the amounts of money that the Housing Minister has just outlined, what is the Treasury expecting those sums to deliver?”