Speeches by Hatton.

“I accept that. That is a very accurate response. Do you accept that there could be a grey area? Some schools will spend it in a correct way and, even if it is going on other things, it will ultimately get back to supporting disadvantaged children, but there is a grey area. If you leave it to schools to use their board …”

“It is a key starting point. Finally, as we see that change in the way Ofsted works as the inspector, how central do you think examining how disadvantaged children are supported will be to those changes? Do you think that will be more prominent than it has been up until now, the same, or not so much?”

“On the accountability side, Ofsted has been in the headlines a huge amount over the past couple of years, so I wondered whether you could speak a little bit to the recent overhaul of the Ofsted grading system, removing single-word judgments, and what impact you think that will have on the accountability side of things.…”

“Do you think the current system is robust enough to ensure that schools are able to make that shift from short-term firefighting to longer-term goals that need to be reached in a clear timeframe? Do you also think the Department has communicated to schools clearly what the consequences are if performance does fall shor…”

“It is a balance. On a slightly different area of questioning, I suppose we have all reflected, this afternoon, that there are a huge number of profound and often competing challenges facing schools, particularly where there are a large number of disadvantaged students. If I look at my own constituency, there is a highe…”

“It is still a significant number.”

“No, no—it is a really important point. For me, it is about the lack of certainty in whether you would be able to answer that point, since you do not know how accurate the 70% figure is and you cannot have any real certainty. I appreciate that you are never going to know everything, but it would be interesting to see ho…”

“It is really important that we widen the discussion to talk about not only stemming the loss of pharmacies, but how we can put pharmacies back. In the south-west, community hospitals would act as an excellent venue for them. Does the hon. Member agree that we should be looking at community hospitals as a potential venu…”

“ Are you not concerned, Sir Jim, that those in a position to conduct very aggressive tax planning or, indeed, tax evasion are the most difficult to identify and that, in fact, small and medium-sized enterprises are the easiest to identify? Those who have tax experts, accountants&…”

“ As a final point, if I may, Sir Jim, do you feel that online retail giants such as Amazon pay their fair share of tax?”

“ Would you accept that not a huge amount of progress has been made, and that that area of aggressive tax planning can often spill over into tax evasion? That is the reality of this industry. Tax avoidance, tax planning and tax evasion is a spectrum, and one can very quickly blur into the other. We k…”

“ That is leverage that small and medium-sized businesses simply do not have.”

“ If I may push a little bit further on that point that the Chair just made, that track record is not great. Only seven of those were specifically for phoenixism. As we have discussed, though, this is at least £500 million of lost tax, which is a significant figure. We also know that, perhaps even more pressin…”

“ If I might interrupt, the Chair gave a very good example of the numbers we are talking about when it comes to these rogue directors and phoney companies. We are talking about thousands and thousands. That is why the number of seven is particularly shocking. To be honest, the 6,274 is not a huge amount better, whe…”

“ I will just park that for a second, but it is quite concerning that we do not have estimates by sector, particularly for the online retail space. Sitting alongside that, Sir Jim, we spoke at our last session about the offshore tax gap. I have the transcript in front of me, where…”

“ Just to be clear, you stand by the estimates from HMRC that the lion’s share of tax evasion is committed by small and medium-sized businesses.”

“ Sir Jim, as this is an area of cross-organisational working, do you have a clearer idea of what HMRC would think good looks like in this area and whether there would be any figures or timeframe for when you might deliver good?”

“ If I might press, I will go back to my original question. What would good look like and what would those numbers look like? I do not think the numbers in this report—the figure of seven specific phoenix cases or that other figure of 6,274—are good numbers. I certainly hope you do not think they are. Wha…”

“ When I was studying for my GCSEs and still had a full head of hair, there were approximately 25,000 hair and beauty businesses in the country. Today, that number has doubled and now stands at approximately 50,000, and yet the number of businesses in that sector that are registered for VAT has,&#xa0…”

“ That is the main concern of this Committee. The Hair Council has submitted written information for this Committee to consider, raising specific concerns around the rent-a-chair model, which looks to split workers into individual, self-employed entities a…”