Speeches by Yang.

“My constituents in Whitley had their Christmas disrupted by an alarming threat of knife crime. We have seen too many tragedies of this kind in Reading over the last few years, so I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s mission to halve knife crime. I have applied for my Earley and Woodley constituency to be a trial l…”

“I recently met medics from the Royal Berkshire hospital as well as other constituents from Earley and Woodley who described the atrocious conditions in which their Palestinian colleagues and relatives continue to operate in the medical facilities that remain in Gaza. I am thankful that the Minister has raised detained …”

“I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and for highlighting the perilous state of GPs in my constituency of Earley and Woodley after 14 years of the previous Government stripping away the NHS. I am very confident in the announcements made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, which he has mad…”

“I will take two interventions. I will take one from the. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans).”

“Today I stand proud to welcome the Budget, which takes long-term fiscal planning seriously. I welcome a Government who will take us away from the course the previous Government steered, away from austerity, and away from the chaos and confusion of the past few Budgets. First, I want to make a brief point about tax simp…”

“How about Post Office services, yourselves?”

“We talked earlier about the need for essential services to maintain cash acceptance. Can we have a quick whip around the panel and you can all nominate your best bets for what counts as essential?”

“Is that going up over time?”

“Thank you. I have a separate question, if I may, about security and the risk for retailers of holding large amounts of cash on site. I was speaking to shopkeepers and shop managers in my constituency of Earley and Woodley, which is in Reading, over the last few weeks, and one of those shop managers told me that their s…”

“Mr Wilson, I am aware that many new market traders may be on a journey from it being a side gig, and they are not really earning that much profit, to it being a full-blown business. Do you see a risk of not paying taxes properly if people are holding on to cash for too long in that process?”

“The lack of traceability of cash is obviously a great strength from some perspectives, but it can also be a vulnerability, and my colleague Harriett Baldwin MP brought up the issue of money laundering. I was wondering if anyone on the panel could speak to the question of cash as a form of tax evasion, and if that is a …”

“So you want to see your retailers mandated to accept cash?”

“So you would rather see it happen earlier than later; is that what you are saying?”

“Would you be happy with the Government mandating convenience stores as accepting cash because they are essential?”

“I understand the point that Mr Lowman made—that in principle it might not make so much of a difference in practice. But if that did happen, now or later down the line, how do you think one could manage or help manage that regulatory burden, if it does become a burden, and minimise that cost? I will start with Mr Lowman…”

“Do you see that bill changing quickly over time, or do you think it is likely to stay the same?”

“Of mandating accepting cash, yes.”

“I will give way in a moment. I add to that the bad decisions made in the previous two Budgets under the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt). Those decisions were not credible. It was not credible, on the March 2024 OBR forecast, that the next Government would do anything about schools, special educati…”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point. I always welcome conversations with the OBR, whose representatives came before the Treasury Committee only a few weeks ago. In that Committee discussion, we had a full debate on its forecasts. It found that the long-term infrastructure and capital spending in the Budget, …”

“I have taken two interventions, which was the number I set for myself, and we do like sticking to numbers on the Government Benches. I am proud that the Labour Government are asking the wealthiest individuals and largest businesses to pay a little more, so we can rebuild the foundations of our broken economy. That mean…”