Speeches by Grady.

“Is it something you are looking at from the point of view of an investigation as to whether that requirement has been met in the overall marketing of this product?”

“My understanding of a consumer duty, Ms Pritchard, is that firms have to tailor their communications to the consumer characteristics. Is that something you are looking at here, and the FCA is paying wider attention to at the moment?”

“There are very many people who bought this product with the understanding that it would pay out no matter when they died. I wonder whether that engages a breach of a consumer duty from a point of view of the nature of the communications to those consumers. Those are vulnerable consumers and they have not understood, on…”

“Mr Rathi, the Government’s financial inclusion strategy emphasises the importance of trust in financial services for vulnerable consumers, and it will go nowhere unless that trust is enhanced. There are many people in Britain who have paid thousands of pounds for funeral protection plans that have been withdrawn by Mai…”

“To sum up on this, if I was a company secretary of a listed company in some merger and acquisition situation, I would have to communicate anything about that at specific times, with specific levels of clarity, in a predictable way: the announcements have to be made before the market opens and so on. These are well unde…”

“It is about choices—choices to invest in the health service so that people can return to work and contribute to the economy. There is nothing more heartbreaking than being a constituency MP and listening to people who have been waiting for over two years for a hip operation and cannot work. It is about choices to inves…”

“Does the Minister agree that it is due to the careful management of the public finances that we have record investment in defence and other areas of the Scottish economy, creating lots of well-paid jobs in Glasgow?”

“Last week, Dr Beck-Friis from PIMCO told us that UK fiscal finances are in a fairly fragile state. Bond investors are focused on actual deficit reduction over the next two years, as opposed to what is forecast or promised for 2029-30. Chancellor, is that where you think the bond markets are too?”

“On the tightening, Chancellor, a lot of commentators point out that much of the savings are back-ended to ’29-30, that much of the tax rises are also back-ended, and that we have real pressures at the back end of the forecasts, with £6 billion of SEND provision moved across, defence spending going up—but with a real ri…”

“Would it have created more confidence if we had brought some of the tightening forward, given that lenders take the view that the UK has for many, many years lacked fiscal credibility?”

“It must follow from what you say that we need to either make other tools, such as anti-trust and competition law or supply side reforms, more effective, or develop new tools to address issues such as the pervasive feature of your evidence today—the issue with administered pricing, where vast amounts of things in the ec…”

“I have a couple of questions for Dr Dhingra, following your interesting Knoop lecture in November. I want to test a couple of propositions with you. Is it your position that at the moment, there may be a bit too much emphasis on monetary policy—if you answer quickly, we can come back to it another time—and not enough e…”

“Thank you. Ms Lombardelli, could you set out in writing to the Committee the reason for the bifurcation, because I do not think it should detain us any longer now?”

“That is the decision, but are you content with that decision or do you think it should be revisited in the future?”

“I wanted to follow up briefly on a small point, Dr Mann. You explained that the committee does not get to vote on the tenors, but you expressed your views very clearly. Is it your position that the committee should get to vote on the tenors?”

“I have a question for Ms Lombardelli. The costs of the Bank of England to society relative to the costs of inflation to society are tiny. I think that what Dr Dhingra’s evidence and what other commentators would say is that, frankly, we do not understand enough about inflation. We need to understand quite a bit more ab…”

“We have an excellent team who draw these things to my attention, so you should thank them too.”

“I thought I would finish on a gentle topic. This Committee was interrupted for a vote on the single market, so I thought we could have a wee chat about Brexit to finish us off. Professor Dhingra, in recent speeches you have cited a published paper on Brexit that says that it has reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, which is a l…”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is extremely confident and 0 is not at all confident, where would you put yourself in terms of having a surplus on the current account in 2029-30?”

“I am very mindful of time. Ms Curtice, do you have anything quickfire to add to that?”