Speeches by Yang.

“Would you consider people who do not score at least four points in any criterion not to be that severely disabled?”

“So it is addressed to those who, under the new rules, would be eligible for PIP, but might be losing some universal credit?”

“I seek a quick clarification on Ms McEvoy’s question. On protecting the most severely disabled, is that package meant to buffer the universal credit reforms or the PIP reforms?”

“What a shame.”

“I have some specific questions about metrics on which it may be appropriate to bring in your team. Is there a regional aspect to this metric? The Prime Minister mentioned high living standards in every region of the country.”

“In its outlook, the OBR explained that much of the £500 you mentioned comes from imputed rent, which it describes as “what homeowners would receive if they rented out their home.” That makes the boost less tangible for households because it is an imputed measure rather than a cash in your pocket measure. I appreciate t…”

“On the question of welfare reforms, I note that in the preface, you have written that “details of the policy package were sent to us very late in the process, and late notice of changes and incomplete analysis hampered our ability to reflect these measures in our forecasts.” To begin with, I want to ask about the timel…”

“We heard earlier from the OBR about concerns about the labour force survey. It is an issue we have raised with the ONS as a Committee. I wanted to start by asking Ruth Curtice to describe the different modelling the Resolution Foundation has done, which in your central estimate finds no net increase in activity from 20…”

“Does that mean that you think that the UK is not an outlier in terms of inactivity, and that that is a problem for the Government to address, or do you have a different opinion about that?”

“Mr Johnson, whose statistics do you prefer: the Resolution Foundation’s or the IFS’s?”

“We will go on to the reforms later, but as a final question on the data, does anyone on the panel have any confidence in the sickness-related inactivity data? How much can we track the underlying increase or otherwise in sickness-related inactivity?”

“What is your central estimate of sickness-related inactivity, given the difficulty you describe in getting precise numbers?”

“It just seems to me that the picture of the underlying data is complex and often quite vague. Is that correct?”

“It is clear that there is a problem, but it is unclear where the problem lies and what the actual trend is—is that the correct summary of what you are saying, Mr Johnson?”

“I have a question about the institutional framework that the OBR and the Treasury operate within. There have been numerous proposals in the media over the last few weeks about doing things such as changing the number of fiscal outlooks, or OBR outlooks a year, or adding other organisations that would make forecasts—for…”

“It is less work for your colleagues.”

“I want to go back to the discussion with Ms McEvoy about the problem of rising claimant counts, expenditure, and disability and incapacity benefits, and to drill a bit more into what kind of a problem that is. Mr Johnson and Ms Curtice, you said that it is a problem. From one perspective, it is a fiscal problem. On the…”

“In response to that, does it make sense to have a kind of fiscal-first solution, in which you decide what percentage of GDP should be spent on these benefits and work from there? How should the fiscal calculation feed into the broader policy calculation?”

“Professor Miles, you just said that people should have much less confidence in the employment stats than they used to, and when you last spoke to the Committee last November you mentioned that you were not very confident about the labour force survey data. By contrast, when we saw the ONS as a Committee the national st…”

“Does the fact that the ONS is very confident make you more confident, or are you still not very confident in its data, as you were last November?”