Speeches by Glen.

“Just building on that, there are quite a lot of cash-like instruments, money market funds, different sorts of gilts, and so on. This uncertainty is surely a big concern for your members. Would you have expected this to have been resolved before the announcement was made?”

“Essentially, what you are talking about is a series of interventions to set up a series of shared entities to presumably support different subsets of the credit union sector which provide financial services alongside commercial organisations. What would be the justification for spending taxpayers’ money to do so when, …”

“On the direction of travel, very few months passed in my four and a half years as an Economic Secretary when I did not see a credit union fail; then there was some consolidation. How would you reassure the public that investment in this space is not going to be wasted and not be effective in improving the resilience of…”

“Just for the record, I am not against credit unions, as I hope you recall. I am trying to draw out how we can do this better.”

“You were in favour of it a years ago.”

“Mr Bland, during our previous interactions when I was Economic Secretary from 2018 to 2022, we did a number of things. We doubled the common bond from £2 million to £3 million. We allowed car insurance and hire purchase to be products that credit unions could offer. We also did the prize-linked saving schemes. Over the…”

“Mr Bland, you said that the number of credit unions—which I recognise from my exposure to this a few years ago—has reduced considerably. I think we have 240 credit unions with less than £10 million in assets. There is mention of a sum of £30 million for transformation. Is there not a danger that we will get into a simi…”

“That is the precursor, is it not, for the Committee and for the wider benefit? In essence, is that what we are talking about looking at again?”

“I mean do it better, obviously.”

“I welcome the news of the capping of ground rents for existing contracts, and I thank the Minister for the time he gave me last year, but he will recognise that many city centre developments require ongoing investment from pension funds, so could he say a little more about how his announcement will not spook the City a…”

“Can I respectfully remind the Minister that when Jonathan Russell from the Valuation Office Agency came before the Select Committee, he was very clear that the impact of the rate rises was made known to the Treasury before the Budget? The VOA provided data drops over 12 months, which did not detail the rates for indivi…”

“Last week I met Lawrence Bowman, the chief executive of South Western Railway. I am keen to make sure that all the Government’s changes take positive effect in Salisbury and south Wiltshire, so that tracks, signal and stock can be improved. Will the Minister make sure that there is a suitable reference board along the …”

“I have one final question. What sort of modelling do you do about scenarios where a mid-tier bank failed for a reason that you could not foresee from the data that you get? While it is covered by the recapitalisation payment levy, would it have a knock-on effect on other challenger banks and be disruptive to the system…”

“I find it difficult to understand.”

“You have been in this role for nine and a half years. You would rest your professional reputation on the integrity of the system post crisis. To a person who is not close to all of this, why do we need such a significant protection limit if all of our banks are so well regulated and everything is in a sound state?”

“Just as an aside, is there some concern over the treatment of what money is, what a money market fund is, and so on? Does that not leave meaningful ambiguity, which is unhelpful overall to the market?”

“You, I, to a lesser extent, and all of us on the Committee are quite steeped in this. The public will see a significant increase in the level of absolute comfort that they can have in their cash reserves and a significantly lower total in their investments, which bear some risk. Has any analysis been done of how behavi…”

“Could I turn to the cash deposit protection limit increase to £120,000? That was, I think, higher than some anticipated—all the proposals were initially for £110,000—but broadly represents nine years of indexation. The obvious question is that it is now different from the £85,000 limit, at a time when the Government, v…”

“My final question before I pass to my colleague is around smaller banks. We have had, I think, 40 new institutions over the last decade. You talk about strong and simple. You talk about the attempts to try to make it an easier path to growth. One enduring frustration is how you really achieve that, because there are, i…”

“Some who would push back on that would say, “In other jurisdictions, they do not necessarily take the same approach.” If you are in a global institution and running an entity based in London, you might say, “We are at a disadvantage to secure more investment to grow business here.” That is crudely, to make it accessibl…”