Speeches by Reeves.

“I think it is a huge opportunity to secure more good jobs, paying good wages and—going back to our discussion earlier—in all parts of the country. These jobs are geographically spread, from Rosyth to Derby to Wrexham to Bristol. There are so many fantastic firms, big and small, in the defence sector. This is an opportu…”

“We appointed Tom Hayhoe earlier this year, but he has only been in post for a couple of months. He is working to see what money can be clawed back, and working with different counterparties across Government in the fraud area. We are determined to do everything we can to get that money back. We will be setting out more…”

“It is not in these documents.”

“We will soon publish more information on his work. It is important work. He has only been in post for a couple of months.”

“I am not going to pluck numbers out—”

“That is why we were really keen to bring in someone with experience and a very clear remit of doing everything we can to get that money back.”

“It is the whole covid period.”

“He is looking across the whole of the covid outlays and where fraud has occurred, but we will be publishing more information shortly.”

“I can give you the exact dates. I have met and spoken to Martin Lewis since I have been in the job—”

“We can send you details of different people that we have met.”

“We can also send you details of who the EST has met.”

“We do not want to rush it, because we want to make sure that we understand people’s different needs, but do I think that reform would be worthwhile. That is what we are looking at at the moment.”

“I am not going to give a timetable for that at the moment, Dame Harriett. I recognise the importance of cash for a lot of people. Already, you can save in a savings account, and some of that—the interest on that—is tax-free. We also have the ISA limits. I do want to look at the balance, because I think sometimes it is …”

“I know you have a background in this area. So we are making those reforms. We are also looking, as you say, at making sure that the ISA system works well for savers, a bit like we are trying to do on pensions in making capital markets work better for the UK. The EST, Emma Reynolds, will be very happy to give you more e…”

“Well, actually, we have speeded up the process, but would I like to do it quicker? Yes. It is really important. At the moment, advice and guidance is the preserve of the wealthiest, and that should not be the case, because people who perhaps need the advice and guidance most are those who make quite big sacrifices to s…”

“Thanks very much for that question. In the Mansion House speech that I gave in November, we set out reforms on advice and guidance. At the moment, sadly—”

“We are very carefully reducing that spending. Again, you will see in the numbers that we set out last week that it does not just drop off in one year; it is a £500 million reduction this year, increased in subsequent years, because we are not just going to leave programmes high and dry. That would be an irresponsible t…”

“Look, we have just set out the funding to get to 2.5% of GDP, which is through a reduction in the international development budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of GDP. You can see in the numbers that all that money is being redirected into defence. That is the right priority, given the challenges that we face. We are achieving th…”

“We might not be inside the European Union, but we are very much inside Europe. We have a shared objective with our allies in and outside the European Union—there are other European nations that are not in the European Union who want to be part of defending our continent. Certainly, our allies in the European Union reco…”

“We absolutely need to learn lessons from the past on failed and poor procurement, and on cost overruns. That is why we are determined to do things differently. It is why I am working closely with the Defence Secretary to get value for money for our defence spending. It is also why we are looking, too, at more innovativ…”