Speeches by Lowe.

“There is a question that follows on from that, Tim. It does not sound as if you have fully taken on board what the NAO said.”

“On that basis, nobody would bother with a budget.”

“Just because you are in a difficult world, that does not mean that you do not try to forecast.”

“I am not sure that it is necessarily the prime concern, Tim. The key is that you can deliver the savings, but the question that I think the NAO is asking, and it is a valid question, is what the downstream effects of those cuts are. It does not appear that you necessarily have the management tools to be able to make th…”

“Too much paperwork can be confusing, can’t it?”

“But you have to accept that some of this is quite critical.”

“Thank you for that. I have a question on the complexity of your finance system. I am finding it difficult to understand why it is so complex. I would like to know why. After all, your actual business model is not that complicated. You send out 72 million letters a year to collect the licence fee from those people who h…”

“That is not money that you have to go and earn; it is money that comes in. I accept that they have not agreed it yet—it is remiss of me not to have done that—but I am struggling to understand why your finance system is so complicated. A complicated and opaque finance system means that it is very difficult to make good …”

“We see in the Report: “However, these business cases did not meet NAO‑identified good practice. They lacked options analysis, had poorly developed risk assessments and in some places contained inaccuracies… The Service’s monitoring of its savings progress was hampered by the complexity of its finance system. It therefo…”

“Complex systems mean opaque data.”

“Good morning, everybody. To start with, I should probably declare a conflict of interest, in that I have had three complaints upheld against the BBC in the last 12 months. In case anyone thinks that makes me biased, I probably ought to disclose that. My question is for Tim. Have you actually all read the NAO Report in …”

“There was no mention of reforming the jury trial system in the Labour manifesto. Given that this is a fundamental, very serious change to the operation of our legal system, which has served us well for centuries, does the hon. Gentleman agree that this change should never be allowed to go ahead without some form of ele…”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?”

“Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me and more than 4,000 business owners, including hundreds of rural companies who signed my open letter to the Chancellor in the last 24 hours, that a root-and-branch review of business rates is now a matter of urgency if bankruptcy and misery is to be avoided? There should be no chan…”

“My question is, have you got the right staff now? I am going to ask you a slightly impertinent question, Dax. You clearly have a marketing background, and you speak and present very well. Matthew, you have been involved with this for some time. You two are leading this still, and one of you is from marketing. In my exp…”

“I am slightly at a loss as to where to start. I have been sitting around this table for a couple of months now. When I listen to things like qualified audits, missing data and lessons learned, I think of the poor taxpayers who are paying a vast amount of tax to fund what is now a very large state part of our economy. I…”

“But Matthew, if you read your report, your staff working with the consultants have not been holding the consultants to account. You have been wasting vast amounts of money on projects that have basically not gone anywhere. [Interruption.]”

“Try and remember that every pound you waste means that somebody else is going to be taxed on their business or their farm, and there are going to be real consequences for Britain if the public sector continues to waste money on the scale that, it is quite apparent to me, is happening.”

“Chairman, could we have the report from David Goldstone—or, as I have nicknamed him, the Ghostbuster? Could we see that? I think it is important that we see that.”

“We can debate that on another occasion. My final question is this. You have David Goldstone, whom you have referred to a lot. I saw from the report that you brought him in. I personally would like to see this Committee have a note from David Goldstone. I am representing the taxpayer, so I would like to know from him, w…”