Speeches by Reeves.

“I have provided the allocation of money—”

“Absolutely, and when we looked at capital gains tax, we looked at the rate that would maximise revenue. If you go beyond a certain rate on taxes, it has an impact on people’s marginal propensity to work. I do not think we are at those levels, but of course when we score any policies and look at the impact of any polici…”

“I will say a couple of things in response to that. First of all, we set out ambitious targets for efficiencies in public services. We are also improving the efficiency of public services through higher capital investment. Often these numbers about unprotected Departments just look at RDEL rather than TDEL, and obviousl…”

“Yes. John Glen And stuff to do with the City, but the overall tax burden has an impact when people look at the UK. Do you recognise that? What would you say to that?”

“Yes, just on debt interest. In the spring forecast, the OBR said that the cost of servicing debt this year would be £3 billion lower than they forecast just in November because the cost of interest on Government borrowing had fallen. The prize, if we can get our borrowing costs back to the G7 average, is £15 billion ev…”

“That is what we have said: we keep all taxes under review.”

“No, but maybe I will let Dharmesh come in.”

“We took a number of measures, particularly in the first Budget, but also in the second Budget, to ensure that those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share of tax. We have got rid of the non-dom tax status entirely. We increased the rate of capital gains tax. We got rid of the loophole whereby private equity b…”

“It was not my job to work out the funding need; the policy is for the Department for Education to work through. But we made a decision as a Government to fund that fully, based on the money that the Department for Education felt was needed to fully fund it. What I would say to parents is that this has been widely consu…”

“We have provided allocations for every Government Department. Obviously, every Department would like to have a bigger budget, but that would require higher taxes, which we—”

“The Department for Education has been working for a while on reform through the schools White Paper, including for children with special educational needs. We hear about that every week in Parliament, whether at Prime Minister’s questions or something else. Every week in all our surgeries, parents come to see us about—…”

“With respect, Mr Glen, we saw the number of people not in education, employment or training under the last Conservative Government increase by more than 100,000. That was not because of greater protections at work and increases in people’s wages; in fact, living standards went backwards in the last Parliament. I just d…”

“Yes.”

“Already, given the unique situation with heating oil, we are working with the Competition and Markets Authority on any price gouging in that sector.”

“We have now funded it in the spring forecast. That is in addition to funding previously allocated.”

“A Chancellor’s job is to get the balance right between public spending, taxation and borrowing. I have been really clear that, to return stability to the economy, we cannot continue to borrow at the levels that I inherited. The result of the actions I have taken—whether that is spending restraint or indeed the tax incr…”

“As former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said in the Chamber on Monday, it is much too soon to be speculating about what action is going to be needed.”

“The Office for Budget Responsibility in their current forecast do expect it to not apply from Q3 next year. As David Miles and Tom Josephs said to the Committee yesterday, if this de-escalates, there is no reason why the forecast might not be correct for next year, in which case the energy profits levy falls away. That…”

“And also your experience about your friend in Afghanistan. It is important that we learn the lessons from the past. One of the reasons why we chose not to be involved in the US action a week and a half ago was because of some of those lessons from the past. I think it is important to be cognisant of those lessons when …”

“Exactly. Obviously, I want to paint a rosy picture of the public finances, but I am not sanguine about them. If you were to take out inflation, it may be the case that we have a lower real rate of interest, but you can’t take out inflation, because you have to pay for inflation as well. Inflation in Britain has been to…”