Speeches by Glen.

“Ms Norberg, would you like to come in?”

“One challenge, I seem to recall, was that in local authorities, there often is inadequate expertise to deal with the aspirations of local politicians around infrastructure. I say this with the greatest respect, but it is quite a technical process to evaluate a significant capital investment, no matter how much noise a …”

“Mr Threlfall, would you like to come in now? Do not feel you have to repeat everything, but if you have something new to say we would love to hear it.”

“My final question is about the measures of success. We are in a competitive international environment. You have pointed out that, if you are a global company in one sector, in one type of green hydrogen project, you will look around the world and say, “What are the different sovereign wealth fund or National Wealth Fun…”

“Could I focus on the strategic objectives and priority areas of the fund? Was it right to exclude what many would see as the most important sector, particularly at the current time, of defence? Do you have any strong views on that? There are obviously elements where there are gaps and needs, and we are facing some sign…”

“You are saying that the defence problem we had a few years ago has been fixed by other changes, so it does not matter that it is not included in this National Wealth Fund.”

“They have to have assurance over the market dynamics before investing in it.”

“What about aerospace?”

“That is after a certain interval of time, though. We should not be doing that for a few years because we need to allow it to bed in.”

“I would first like to address the size of the fund and the sufficiency of it. There has been some commentary about how dissimilar or similar the National Wealth Fund is to its predecessor, the UK Infrastructure Bank. There is a £5.8 billion difference in the amount of money. I wonder whether each of you in turn could c…”

“Can I follow up on that before I move to the other witnesses? The business plan for the UK Infrastructure Bank made some assessment of the balance between debt, equity and guarantees. As I understand it, the National Wealth Fund has now added five new sectors. You have already said, Mr Cummings, that it is a relatively…”

“Of course the Minister is absolutely right in what he has just said. However, he will also be very aware that within the budgets he is responsible for, there will be capital underspends in-year, so there will be an opportunity for him to make the case to his Secretary of State and to the Treasury, to say, “Should some …”

“It is, and I wish St Mary’s parishioners well in all their endeavours. There is scope for the Government to come out of this in a very positive way in June by looking back over what they can do to put this right. For my second point, I want to spend a few moments reasserting the impact that church buildings have on loc…”

“I acknowledge the hon. Lady’s point. Every Member present today will have a vivid portrait in their mind of an impact that a church makes in their community. It is quite different in different places, and evolves according to the needs of that community. I will not go through every single church that I have visited ove…”

“I am trying to avoid making party political points, but the hon. Lady does tempt me, because at St Paul’s in Salisbury—where I go to church and where my grandmother went 100 years ago—we recently had a win in the local elections over a member of her party. That says something about the commitment that Chris Taylor has …”

“I commend my friend, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova), for opening this co-sponsored debate, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. This is a useful and important opportunity for colleagues across the House to draw attention to the consid…”

“Undoubtedly, the City of London is not in the best possible place when it comes to where it is investing and the amount invested in UK equities. When I was a Minister, we had the Hill review, the Kent review, the Austin review and the capital markets review. Everything was done to seek to open up the City to more initi…”

“You mean it is not a reliable tool to use to monitor and evaluate people in that regard?”

“I must just press you one more time on that. It should not, but we also know it clearly could, to gain competitive advantage in what can be a very intensely competitive industry, in parts. What proactive safeguards, assessments, studies or work need to be done to ensure that you do not have to do it after there is some…”

“Mr Luther, can I turn to the culture of the workplace and how AI might impact it? There has been some evidence that suggests that AI is capable of looking at things such as harassment, bullying and I imagine probably performance issues generally. What do you think about the extent of the scope of the impact of AI on be…”