Speeches by Olney.

“Just quickly, what led to that recommendation? Have you found that there are officials in Government Departments who are continuing to operate under a ministerial direction that should have—”

“That is very good to hear. Thank you.”

“I had not prepared to ask this question. It is basically around capability, capacity and local government, and the existing mechanisms that there were to tackle fraud and implement counter-fraud measures. Given the scale of what was required during covid, do you think that local government may have struggled to cope wi…”

“Thank you; that is really interesting. I will come back a bit later to your recommendations, particularly those that have been only partially accepted, including on your point about the small companies regime. You have talked about the NHS and the difficulty of data, as well as the unknown counterparties, which is prob…”

“Reading your report was a slightly unusual experience: someone had something nice to say about HMRC. That is not a common experience for us on the Committee, or as constituency MPs.”

“Are companies taking other steps to avoid repayment? Some are obviously being blocked from dissolving, but for the ones that are still trading but not making repayments, are there other ways around repayment that they are exploiting? Are there any loopholes?”

“You mentioned that there were no personal guarantees originally. Do you have any powers to change that? Where you have companies that do not have any assets and cannot repay your loan, but the individuals involved do, are you able to—”

“Let me come back to your earlier point about the small company reporting regime. The Government only partially accepted your recommendation, on the basis that Companies House accounts reforms will improve transparency and data reliability. Could you expand a little on what you were saying earlier about why you think th…”

“Steven, a lot of the bounce back loans and other loans available to businesses were driven through lenders—banks and so on. Were the counter-fraud measures required by the Department sufficient for the loans being delivered in that way?”

“Joining the single market and a customs union could boost UK GDP by about £25 billion a year. Single market membership would give the UK access to EU defence programmes, creating high-skilled jobs in aerospace, advanced manufacturing and defence technology. It would restore passporting rights for financial services, re…”

“Research by the British Retail Consortium found that over two thirds of part-time workers in the retail sector took the role because they needed flexibility around educational and caring commitments. The number of young people not in employment, education or training is over 1 million. Liberal Democrats repeatedly warn…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) on his work to secure this debate and his excellent opening remarks. The decline of high street services has been an ongoing issue in the UK, with banks and other essential services disappe…”

“In your earlier answer, you said that only one in three customers who were in arrears were on a repayment plan, and that, where customers are on a repayment plan, their arrears are lower. What are you doing to work with the water companies to make sure that more people get on to those repayment plans, and does the regu…”

“Are you expecting further significant rises this year?”

“Will there be penalties if you think that they are not doing enough?”

“My question was about what causes customers to get into debt with their water companies.”

“Chris, I was interested to see in the Report that Ofwat has not been monitoring for very long at all the amount that customers owe to water companies—only since 2023-24. Yet by 2025, customer debt to water companies totalled £2.9 billion, which is an extremely significant sum. Just over 4 million household accounts wer…”

“So there is no water-specific reason?”

“I will stick with you, Chris. I have a few questions about the priority services register. We know from the Report that there are 30 “needs codes” describing characteristics that would “make a customer eligible” to go on the register. What lessons have you learned about the PSR process on customers with extra communica…”

“Can I give a particular example of an incident that we heard about in our pre-panel. I am sure that I need not remind you that a big water outage occurred in Tunbridge Wells before Christmas. We heard about water companies delivering water, presumably in large plastic bottles, to people in vulnerable situations and on …”