Speeches by Edwards.

“That is excellent progress.”

“Now SMEs can go in and bid for contracts and they do not have multiple accounts.”

“Okay—my apologies. I can do that.”

“Are regional hospitals now going to go back to procuring it or will that stay at a national level?”

“I am interested in asking about demand signals; you might want to build on this. We have heard about the Find a Tender scheme, pre-procurement notices and the reserved procurement space for SMEs. One of the things that I am interested in asking about is the difference between the national Government responsibility and …”

“It is.”

“Thank you very much and thank you to the Committee for inviting me to present my application. Happy anniversary! What anniversary? It is the anniversary of me dealing with a terrible incident on my high street last year. A microbusiness owner came to me in tears. Her energy supplier, E.ON Next, was threatening to cut o…”

“Yes.”

“No—that is what we are putting in for. I think what John is saying is that we have heard evidence that this is such a no. 1 issue that needs to be debated. We think it is big enough for it to be anywhere.”

“Energy and Net Zero.”

“I can certainly add more. I have the support of the Business and Trade Committee, so that is Conservative and Liberal Democrats, and there are many more. I was asked to present eight, so I presented eight—should you wish to have more, I can provide you many more. Do I need two more?”

“Building on this discussion around framework, perhaps I will ask Francesca first and then other panel members might like to comment. The last Government had quite a lot of different approaches to economic security. We know that we have different Departments responsible for different elements. The Cabinet Office is look…”

“Picking up on what you have been saying, there is a bit more clarity for businesses and there has been an improvement around the investment screening regime. Do you think it would help to have a formal definition of economic security? Do you think that would help the private sector to better understand the Government’s…”

“Martin, did you want to comment as well?”

“Just following up on that, I have heard in a couple of ways about a speeding-up of the process or identifying less risky categories. Is there something like a fast-track lane that some other countries use that you think is a good idea? Again, take the good things from other places and apply them to what we have, which …”

“Mike, you just indicated that you wanted to come back on that.”

“Mike, did you want to comment on the scope? You obviously have some experience.”

“Could I just follow up on the point that you made about UK-to-UK investment? Given how complex many companies are, and the subsidiaries within subsidiaries within whatever complex umbrella structure that you like, does that data reflect that that is what we are seeing or is there an extra level that maybe was not analy…”

“Perhaps following on from that discussion that we are having around the scope, who is covered, whether they should be and that debate, does the National Security and Investment Act get the balance right between our national security and the ease of investing in companies? Can you speak to that? Do you have any thoughts…”

“It would be interesting if anybody else had anything to add to that. It was just to understand whether you had come to a clear conclusion or whether there were other thoughts around what we could be doing. For example, do we need to look at a prioritisation? We have already spoken about Japan having a categorisation of…”