Speeches by Glen.

“May I say what a pleasure it is to serve not only under your chairship, Dame Siobhain, but on the Treasury Committee with you and the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West)? I first became engaged in this subject during my first Parliament, when I joined the all-party parliamentary group on hunger a…”

“Duncan Grocock, a frequent commuter from Salisbury to London, came to see me about the short-forming of South Western Railway trains along the line through Andover and Basingstoke. Passengers can be compensated when trains are late, but not when they must stand for commutes of an hour and a half. Will the Leader of the…”

“Good luck.”

“On the balance of probabilities, it is likely that, across all the new things that you have to do—we have already discussed several of them this morning—one of them is going to go wrong. How do you use your experience to justify that degree of optimism going forward, Mr Russell?”

“Can I just take you back to the tax gap, the progress that you expect to make and the profile of the reduction?”

“With respect, most agencies of all Government Departments make those plans—you are an experienced civil servant—and these unforeseen problems arise. Chair: It is the real world.”

“I am concerned about the complexity of the operations that you currently have to deal with and the challenge of trying to absorb quite a new responsibility. I understand that the VOA routinely takes nine to 12 months to process applications from owners seeking to move from, say, self-catering properties from council ta…”

“That is another complexity for you to deal with.”

“Sorry, I am just a bit confused. If the threshold does not change and the triple lock progressively accelerates each year and increases the amount of basic state pension that somebody receives, there is a difference between those two amounts, which is taxable. It gets bigger over time. If we take, which we will, the Ch…”

“It seems to be—I suspect all Governments have a tendency to do this—optimistic at the end of the period. How do you feel about that? What is the conversation with the OBR around verifying whether that is realistic? It is easy for any Government to say, “We are going to put in these measures and we are going to have a m…”

“It is very steep. How do you feel about that? Do you reference what has been said in previous fiscal events by previous Governments when thinking about how likely it is that we will get to that point?”

“Do you have a metric for how you are improving the way that you deal with that group of people?”

“I feel duty-bound to ask about vulnerable customers and people who are anxious. They will hear this and think, “There’s no time for me. I’m very uncomfortable adjusting to this digital world”. How can you reassure those customers who are not in that place of comfort, for whatever reason, perhaps typically because they …”

“Just before Christmas, Mr Rahman, a leaseholder in a Taylor Wimpey property, came to see me. There are 100 years remaining on his lease and a modest ground rent, but he cannot secure a sale because Taylor Wimpey will not agree to a reasonable deed of variation in relation to the ground rent provisions. He has incurred …”

“I thank the Secretary of State for his update. He is a serious and experienced politician, and I have no doubt that he always acts in the national interest. What concerns me is the gap between the coherence of NATO and its approach—the approach that he has set out that we will take if a peace agreement can be found in …”

“I welcome the partial U-turn. When I met a number of farmers on Boxing day, all 400 of them were very concerned that the next phase of this Government’s relationship with rural Britain would be a consultation on banning trail hunting. On the basis of this experience, I think that the Minister could go back to the Treas…”

“I welcome the publication of the strategy, and acknowledge the Minister’s commitment over many years to get to this point—this must be a great moment for her. A few weeks ago, I visited Salisbury Soroptimists, who published “Fresh Thoughts”, a document taken from Dorset and customised for Wiltshire to give information …”

“On Sunday, George Starling told me of his work as a volunteer for the Prison Fellowship with the Sycamore Tree project, which is a restorative justice scheme that has been going on for over 50 years. The scheme has been shut down, and its appeal has not been granted. It is a victim awareness and restorative justice pro…”

“What does it mean in terms of increased risk appetite? How does somebody watching this grasp what you are saying, what it means for what you are prepared to enable?”

“What do we need to do to advance, then?”