Speeches by Olney.

“Can you give some examples of the improvement you have seen?”

“Don’t worry; I will speed up. Mr Cartner, can you give us a bit more detail about the knock-on impact of Departments publishing their accounts late or getting late audits on Government operations as a whole?”

“Mr MacMillan, can you just say how developed the plans for the phase 1 work are? And just to clarify things, is the extra £196 million—as set out in paragraph 211—the cost of running phase 1, which would support either of the two options, as opposed to running phase 1 when one option has already been decided?”

“We know.”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask a sub-question related to Anna Dixon’s question? Do you find that the decision making in the R&R programme is better aligned to decision making in some of the other programmes that are ongoing alongside it as a result?”

“Mr Duffy, can you talk about the steps the Environment Agency are taking to bring forward the publication of their accounts?”

“So internally, you will already know the issue that a set of accounts might point to, but what about your external stakeholders? Will their understanding of the operation of the Department not be delayed?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) on her work in securing this debate. The current landscape is extremely challenging for businesses of all kinds across all sectors, including social enterprises. I am sure that colleagues from …”

“I completely understand, but how will you identify the 20 of the 80:20, or the ones that are going to deliver 80% of the impact? How are you going about identifying those?”

“Mr O’Neil, the Report references the fact that there have been 10 separate attempts to do this over the last 15 years or so. What we have learned from those previous attempts to reduce the regulatory burden is that one or two things can have a great impact. How will you go about identifying which of the regulatory burd…”

“Can you give me any specific examples? You cited financial regulators.”

“Mr O’Neil, what does less risk-averse regulation look like in practice?”

“Ms Glover, the same question to you: can you give specific examples of where an increase in regulatory risk appetite can deliver growth?”

“You can only assess the effectiveness from looking at GDP.”

“What certainty will there be in selecting the activities you no longer require regulated industries to carry out? You might have a range of things you could suggest, but how will you select the ones that are more likely to deliver growth?”

“Would you agree that there is a possibility that it is very easy to cut the administrative cost, but perhaps less easy to demonstrate how that is driving growth?”

“Can I interrupt you very quickly? You said that reporting requirements had decreased. Has that delivered any specific boost to growth?”

“What do you need? What will you do?”

“How will you hold those individual Departments accountable? If they do not have their own targets within that 25% overall target, how will you hold them accountable for the actions that they need to deliver?”