Speeches by Glen.

“I thank the Secretary of State for her statement—I agree with practically everything she has said. When I heard these reports, I thought of the Mayor of Wilton, Councillor Alexandra Boyd, who is Jewish, and about what it would have felt like for her to have watched that with her family. We in this place all understand …”

“Yes, we were in power for 14 years, and during covid, when I was a Minister, we made decisions such as stopping face-to-face assessments because we could not do them. We all recognise that the recovery from that covid time has not gone as well as it should, but if the Secretary of State cannot deliver a shift in the nu…”

“Well, I think that is what we are saying—we will have to wait and see. But there is no measure to arbitrate on that; it is a judgment.”

“I certainly get the point about there being a consensus between the previous Government and this one on devolving decision making. How do you avoid a situation where you create lots of happy people outside London, with local mayors who are given more discretion to make growth-enhancing investments within their terms of…”

“With the greatest respect, that is not the point I am making. I totally agree with you that it must be their decision. I am saying that the combined aggregate economic value of those intra-city transport schemes is less significant in terms of the national growth mission overall, and that there are better decisions tha…”

“Why the universal 10%?”

“No, what I am saying is that spending money locally has a different economic outcome from national infrastructure projects that do not involve one particular region or a combined series of regions. Rishi Sunak came as a Back Bencher to see Philip Hammond when I was Philip’s PPS, and he said he wanted to do freeports. T…”

“They would have to find cuts in other line items within their own budget, because no other money is available.”

“Gemma Tetlow from the IFG talked about the uniform 10% administrative budget cuts. If you are doing a zero-based review, as Mr Dean said, it is a holistic opportunity to consider first principles: what are we doing and what are we not doing? How do you justify what appears to be, and what Ms Tetlow appeared to say was,…”

“I do not think I have been very clear, but what I am trying to get at is the arbitration between the relative value of delegated expenditure and centrally driven infrastructure or other stimulants from capital expenditure from the centre.”

“Your officials would dispute it.”

“How do we, as a Committee, and the public verify the added value of the Office for Value for Money, given that its advice to you is private?”

“With regard to the Chair’s point about public scrutiny, what will that look like to the outside?”

“Mr Smewing, I will just put it on record that I never had a problem with the work of your team and did not feel the need for additional advice.”

“But forgive me, Chief Secretary, if you are going to make good on that collaborative approach to the settlement being arrived at, presumably you need distinctly different processes for measuring the progress in collaborative expenditure to outcomes. How much did the core functions that exist across Whitehall and in the…”

“We want all of Government to spend money efficiently and demonstrate that the spending review is leading to better outcomes in terms of what the spending does. The question I really want to get at is: do you plan to do anything differently in the Treasury in terms of monitoring the effectiveness of the decisions about …”

“I hope it will. What I am trying to get at is that you can collaborate in the bit before and allocate to spend money better, but as a Committee we need to measure whether that collaborative spending effort is leading to better outcomes.”

“But can I ask one further tight question on the departmental delivery plans? They have identified, I think, annual efficiency savings of £14 billion by 2028-29. How will it be verified that they have been achieved? What is the tangible, clear evidence that that number will be met by that time?”

“I am delighted that you think you are doing so much better than anything that has come before.”

“What happens if they don’t?”