Speeches by Blake.

“You would be proposing to double the cap.”

“My view is that there is an overall value for money for the taxpayer on the overall price cap. My view is that there are trade-offs to be made around where you would allocate public subsidy into this form of incentivising home ownership.”

“There will be people in my constituency who are not able to buy their first home within, it is important to say, communities that are just minutes away from here. How could you make the case for value for money with such a significant median house price?”

“The median house price in my constituency is £1 million.”

“Are there other categories that might help, for example bedroom numbers, that could be equivalent caps to use for the fund?”

“Ms Olufunwa, we are thinking about the price cap and the impact that that is having. For great swathes of London and the south‑east, this product is essentially irrelevant. You have talked about wanting to increase the property cap. What impact would that have on opportunities for people who want to buy their fi…”

“The Government are spending £500 million on this. Is this the best thing that they could do? There are other things that the Government can do with that money. I am interested in whether it is the right thing that they should be doing.”

“Mr Lewis, you said that this product had been successful for first-time buyers. Has it been any more or less successful than any other comparable products?”

“There has been a discussion about the policy benefits of being here. You have talked about going to Westminster City Council a bit less—”

“I might have an opinion about the scale of the visitor economy in central London and the impact on local government finance. To pursue that, could you characterise or explore with us the policy benefits of that wider and, we would all argue, more thorough perspective on the stakeholders?”

“You said that you do not want to overstate the regional and town benefits to having the campus here, but some evaluation shows that 67% of people have noticed a benefit, and it talks about some of the benefits you mentioned, including to local purchasing and local industries. Has any thought been put to doing an assess…”

“Is every Department zero-based?”

“But if you were to just look at that line, you would establish that it was not really generating much growth or investment, so you have to look at that line in the context of the longer-term challenges.”

“I will give you an example of something that is hugely costly in the short term, but in the long term, investment could change it. Temporary accommodation costs £4 million a day in London. It cannot all be moved through one zero-based review because those are homes and roofs over people’s heads. What would the zero-bas…”

“You talked about low value for money and high value for money. What are the assessment tools for working that out? Building on the discussion about growth, how will you be assessing the slow-burn spending?”

“Cut this, grow that.”

“I am glad you mentioned the zero-based reviews. For those of us who don’t spend all our time thinking about public spending, I would like to give you a chance to talk about what they are. Also, they are a huge amount of work if done properly. How are you making sure that the Departments have the capacity to do that? Co…”

“I would like to move on to the spending review. Are you on track for June?”

“So the sector is on the radar, but the full assessment of any barriers to growth in the sector has not been completed. Is that fair to say?”

“I wanted to ask about growth and the conditions for growth in the co-operative and mutual sector. Do we have the right policy environment for that sector at the moment?”