Speeches by Glen.

“Can I ask you one other thing about the interaction with the Treasury? I recall, in previous fiscal events, there was an iterative process of discussion—for example, around the therapeutic effect, if you like, of the childcare policy. During that conversation, the impact on jobs and so on worked through. My assumption …”

“But don’t you think it is highly regrettable that over the last few months you have been sucked into this political debate about a black hole? Do you think that can be avoided in future?”

“It is just that the problem we have, and that we are left with—I will finish on this question—is that the assertion is made by the Government that there was a sort of wilful restriction on what was shared with you. My impression, working through, I think, seven fiscal events, was that there was a formal iterative proce…”

“If I may, as the Minister who did that, we concluded it the day before the election was called. It was impossible—”

“I just want to ask one question about this productivity issue and productivity savings. Most Government Departments assert, I think, 2% per Department and stress the rigidity of that. What is your experience of the delivery of that and any optimism bias in that assertion? It seems intuitively that, with AI and differen…”

“I just want to ask about the tax side of things. There has been a lot of controversy about the agricultural property relief, and that will be ongoing. Some of that is outside your realm. Were you asked to do any different scenarios around the threshold changes? What did they give in terms of projections of different sa…”

“Am I allowed to ask you, “If you were asked”? If I asked you to apply a higher threshold, what effect would that have on revenues? Obviously, it is something that many stakeholders in the industry are looking at in the context of all the other pressures they face. What material impact does that have? If you are not all…”

“Have you done any distribution analysis of where that money is from—how many people? Is it 2,000 estates that will yield the £520 million over the forecast period?”

“Do you know anything about the baseline? It is asserted that 73% will not be in scope of this. If the baseline is inflated by, essentially, a house with three acres that is not really a farm, can you say anything about that assessment?”

“I mean the 73% could be seen as misleading because it includes small holdings that are not, for meaningful purposes, actual farms.”

“What concerns me is that, given that the rhythm of activity was routine and you had no reason to believe that there would be a change in the way that Treasury officials would interact with you, at the time of that fiscal event in March/April the OBR never said anything about its concerns over a material change in the d…”

“I was there until 12 November.”

“In 2023. I cannot account for the interval between that and the fiscal event. However, having worked with those departmental spending teams week in, week out, I cannot see how their demeanour and approach to doing their job would have changed in those four months. That is why it is quite confusing that we have got to t…”

“Can we turn to public investment? I want to ask some questions about the OBR and the modelling of public investment beyond the immediate period. Perhaps I could start with Mr King. What do you think about the OBR’s assessments at 10 and 50 years? The core narrative of the Government is that we are fixing the foundation…”

“We did know from your biog. Thanks for telling us.”

“Yael, could I turn to you and Mr Brewer on the OBR’s assessment of the lags in terms of the effect of this public investment? One of the frustrations from the Government’s point of view is that they are making all this investment, but there is a lag before it can be accounted for. How do you think about the OBR’s asses…”

“Is that fair, though, given the emphasis that the new Government have put on fixing planning? You talk about the constraints in terms of the labour force or whatever, but they have put an emphasis on overruling constraints in terms of public opinion on where to build and removing those barriers. Is the OBR not being a …”

“Mr Brewer, would you like to say something?”

“I just wanted to ask about regulatory reform and industrial strategy. Those are areas that will have an effect on the economy. The OBR has increased this concept of dynamic scoring. Do you see a role for that mode of analysis with those areas or are we getting into unrealistic assessments of economic activity? I take t…”

“Yes, I remember.”