Speeches by Western.

“Tom, what is the NFU’s view on agri-products?”

“Just briefly, Tom, on the point about whether milk is a commodity, if we think about water, it used to be a commodity and now it is a premium product. Regarding your point about regulatory standards, is there an opportunity there for us to do something about our milk exports, which are of a higher standard than others,…”

“Here we are three years on from the Tory Truss kamikaze Budget. It is worth recalling just how bad that was—absolute carnage, with interest rates rocketing and mortgage market mayhem, and people and businesses left to pay for the Conservative chaos. That 49-day con trick was an ideological experiment that will scar thi…”

“I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. That was one of the great failings of the last 14 or 15 years; when interest rates were at record lows, that was the time as a nation to invest in our infrastructure. Any business would have done that. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Returning to productivity, if we had conti…”

“Would you argue that the investment of resources in these teams more than pays for itself against the revenue that we are losing against illegal sales?”

“In your estimation, how many more trading standards staff do you need compared to what we have currently, as a percentage?”

“Has that been a challenge over recent years?”

“I understand that. When you speak to the national associations for hairdressers or beauticians, whatever they are called, they say it is pretty obvious what has been going on for quite some time. Wendy, are the agencies are working well? Where particularly do you have evidence of them working well locally?”

“That is quite staggering, really. I remember witnessing a young woman being coerced into a nail bar several years ago in one of my towns, which I was really worried by. If you look at any high street, certainly the streets in my towns, you will see nail bars on nearly every corner. You will see Turkish barbers on every…”

“Do you not think it was quite evident that this was international crime gangs several years ago? Was there just no interest or no priority for this?”

“Whose area of focus is it?”

“Just on that, Wendy, you said five years. Many of us, I am sure, have been sensing that this has been going on for quite a long time. There has been a lot in the media about this particular topic, which has raised its public profile and concern about it. Sal, when did it really hit your radar? As you said, Machinize ha…”

“This is really a question for BlackRock and Schroders. I am interested in how it is that you are working to ensure that institutional investors are really connecting with the real economy.”

“If you are trying to incentivise the market, which is what you are saying we should be doing, should the seller be taxed more?”

“On what you were saying about maybe shifting to a 0% on stamp duty, so on the acquisition, if you were to make it fiscally neutral, where would you levy tax?”

“The proposals are for the PPF to take a more ambitious role in all this. How do you see that?”

“On the subject of consolidation and aggregation, this is a question for you, Barry. In your eyes, will the pension scheme consolidation lead to more investment into UK assets and businesses? Is that the result, or is it just something that is wished for?”

“On that, was that the case through the last decade or so, when we had record low interest rates?”

“What do you find are the barriers to, or what is helping enable, these products being taken up by the pension funds?”

“Is that what you are seeing, Tim?”