Speeches by Gilmour.

“We have had terrible flooding in my constituency because of Storm Éowyn. As I drove through my home village of Bampton yesterday, I saw an elderly resident—Richard Hutter—desperately trying to pull up the drain so that the water could be taken from the high street. The wall between Withycombe and Rodhuish has fallen in…”

“I do not understand why it has taken you so long to work out that radon was a problem. Being brought up in the south-west and having lived there for 60 years, everybody knows there is radon on the moors, whether it is Exmoor or Dartmoor. If you require a mortgage on a house in those areas, for 20 years you have had to …”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill strives for that adaptation in farming, recognising the urgent need to develop agricultural resilience and sustainable farming practice, and actually offers true financial support, which would help our farmers?”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“How confident are you that the WGA is reliable for this purpose, given that the audit opinion is expected to be disclaimed in the future?”

“When did you notice that? You said 2014 to 2019, so that is a five-year period.”

“With hindsight, would you say that the abolition of the Audit Commission was unfortunate?”

“Thank you; that is very straightforward.”

“We hope that you have a vision for the future of the WGA. Will you outline what your vision is?”

“Given the disclaiming issues, I would hope that reliability is part of your vision for the WGA.”

“Good.”

“Hugely sub-optimal—that is great!”

“Maybe I am a bit thick, but you are telling me that the WGA relies on what you refer to as soft intelligence, because people talk to each other and then they talk back to you. In my definition, that is anecdotal evidence.”

“But how can you track and audit soft intelligence?”

“In recent weeks, I have been working with an excellent organisation called Family Business UK. Before Christmas, it did some research on the impact of agricultural property relief and business property relief on family businesses, and it is about to do another round of research. Do the Minister’s officials want to avai…”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that the high streets of Tiverton and Minehead, as well as those of every other constituency in the country, will be hurt by this Government’s decision to lower the amount of relief offered to retail, hospitality and leisure businesses from 75% to 40%? Does she also agree that they should inst…”

“Good morning. This is a question to Andrew Cartner. Given the circumstances that we are in, what actions are you taking to improve the quality of reporting in the WGA?”

“I was looking for improvement, rather than a dissection of what is missing and what is not missing. The question was about improving.”

“Better.”

“This is to Mr Bowler. How will you be using the WGA in future? At the moment, it contains audited information that may be pertinent to new fiscal rules announced in the 2024 autumn Budget.”