Speeches by Glen.

“Should she look to rejoin those now?”

“Previously, at last year’s Budget, the Chancellor did not mention Brexit as a cause of productivity performance, yet in the last few weeks, and in her speech yesterday, she has done. Why do you think that is?”

“Can I turn to Brexit, trade and tariffs?”

“The traffic jams continue.”

“Shocking!”

“When you were Chancellor, you looked into Michael Johnson’s proposal on the lifetime ISA, which was characterised as an attempt to create an alternative savings vehicle. Given that £10 billion to £15 billion of pension relief is on higher rate taxpayers and that, if you had had mass adoption of that vehicle, you would …”

“I recall looking into it in some detail as Chief Secretary—”

“Can I ask about the issues of the future liabilities in terms of pensions? We have obviously got some quite big differences in the public sector liabilities going forward. Some opposition parties have been looking at this. Mr Osborne, when you were in government, you introduced the career average imperative. Where do y…”

“Sir Vince, do you want to come in and say anything different on that?”

“But not adequate enough at 8%.”

“May we turn to welfare and pensions policy? Twenty-two per cent. of total Government spending is on welfare. Mr Osborne, you talked about the achievements of auto-enrolment and, Sir Vince, you talked about the issues of the triple lock and that achievement. A way of dealing with that pressure might be to put a ratchet …”

“Yes.”

“It is nearly 10 years since the coalition ended. If you look at the level of GDP growth, I think there has been only one year when it was above 2.5%, apart from the aberration of covid and immediately after. Is there not a risk that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, faces a situation where society’s expectations are bound…”

“Later today, the Government will publish their financial inclusion strategy. I welcome the steps forward for financial literacy. Will the Secretary of State collaborate with the Economic Secretary and use the wealth of expertise and enthusiasm that exists among the banks and financial services industry to ensure that m…”

“That basically means that if anything goes wrong on your watch, you are responsible, and this could just be added into it.”

“The Government’s financial services growth and competitiveness strategy is underpinned by a need for financial stability, but it also calls for deregulation. We have seen some moves in that regard, with the FCA offering greater flexibility on mortgages; we have also seen moves forward with things like the permanent dig…”

“On the topic of this week’s session on the senior managers and certification regime, one issue that came up was having a new senior management function dedicated to AI. Do you rule that in or out?”

“I gave it with the greatest respect. I did not mean in any way to—”

“I do not doubt the high-level narrative, which you have articulated well. All I am trying to say is that there are specific, actionable things that need to be done urgently if we are to be competitive with the US. I urge you to get your officials to give you a list of things to take to the PRA and FCA, because they wil…”

“There is another question that I wanted to ask. This Committee has looked hard at trying to find meaningful things that can be taken away, in terms of reporting obligations to regulators that are superfluous and do not lead to any actions. I remember being briefed on the potential modernisation of the Consumer Credit A…”