Speeches by Dickson.

“Do we still have strong teams of staff at the Bank looking at those issues and understanding the analysis that you are talking about? Last time we spoke, I think the Governor accepted that there were now fewer staff working on those issues and that that might indicate a lesser emphasis on them, which was perhaps a bit …”

“The Governor talked about how some of the activity appears to be pushing the envelope a little. Is there anything you need to do, proactively, to rein that in a bit and make sure that we are not exposed to an additional risk?”

“Do you think that is a risk? You have not mentioned it, but it would appear to be an activity that might threaten stability.”

“The financial stability report talks about banks deploying significant risk transfers. That obviously means taking some of the risk off their balance sheet and putting it into other forms of assets—”

“What would you say are the risks facing the core banking sector? Is it the geopolitical tensions that we have talked about, the AI bubble, exposure to non-banks or anything else? What are the key things on the radar for that sector?”

“I thank the Minister for his statement and for his great work in securing the deal. I particularly welcome the fact that the call he received in Hyde Park while the Scissor Sisters were playing has enabled him to cut red tape in our trade relationship with Switzerland. The acid test for the six free trade agreements th…”

“Let us look at some other risks that we are facing at the moment. We are in the middle of the third wave of extreme weather this year, so clearly climate change is front and centre for all of us in our thinking about how the country and the world are developing. Would you say that climate change is now a bigger risk th…”

“Do you think that the banks know enough about what is in the areas that they are transferring risk to in order to have a really good sense of how much risk they are taking?”

“Does the climate change that we are seeing have an impact on financial institutions in a way that we should be taking notice of?”

“Do you think there is a big difference between the SRTs and the collateralised debt obligations that were a significant part of the financial crisis in 2008? No matter how good we may be in our approach to regulation, we all know that the CDO problem was most significant in the US jurisdiction and that brought us down …”

“I thank the Foreign Secretary for her statement and for the work that she and the Prime Minister have done at the NATO summit. May I register my huge concern, and that of my constituents, that the ceasefire between the US and Iran appears to be over, due to the egregious breaches by Iran? The situation has escalated, w…”

“One piece of procurement that has been puzzling the Committee a bit—perhaps it speaks to a less than fully functional relationship between the MOD and the Treasury—is the new medium helicopters contract with Leonardo. At one point back in February, it was being said by the Treasury that it had authorised the spending w…”

“Chief Secretary, that piece of procurement predates you. Do you have much knowledge of what went on with it?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Harpreet Uppal) on securing this important debate. In Dartford and our towns and villages we have an increasingly youthful population, with a quarter of households in the constituency comprising a family…”

“Finally, on the notion that the Treasury had to sign this off without the MOD being fully on board and that there was tension around the timing and the nature of the sign-off by the Treasury, as widely reported in the media, would you say that that was not the issue?”

“I thank the Minister for his statement. He may recall that in a Westminster Hall debate on 4 February many of us raised cases of affected constituents. I spoke about four Dartford residents who were unable to access their civil service pensions. Two of those cases remain completely unresolved, and one has been only rec…”

“Enforcement clearly is an issue. We see, in some parts of the country, there being insufficient resource to enforce properly, particularly around illicit tobacco, vapes and other products. There are some new powers coming in with the Tobacco and Vapes Act, which gives local authorities power to license shops that are s…”

“Thank you for that answer. Obviously it is multi-layered and there are lots of issues involved in the level of tobacco taxation. However, it is the case that the tax gap appears to be rising. It was 13.6% last year. It is now 14.2%. That is the tax not collected on the cigarettes in circulation. Does that tell us that …”

“I am going to ask some questions about illicit sales of tobacco and vapes. Ms Cheeseman, as we know, around 80% of the price of a standard pack of cigarettes goes to tax. Some people think that that is too much; some people think that it is too little. Do you think that we have the taxation of tobacco right in this cou…”

“17. What recent progress he has made on the expansion of youth hubs.”