Speeches by Yang.

“Ms Russell, you mentioned earlier that the Treasury is also conducting its own zero-based review of its own costs. Do you consider the Treasury indemnity to the Bank of England’s asset purchase facility as one of those costs? I note the publication from the Bank yesterday that estimates around £30 billion a year is bei…”

“Bringing in Ms Russell and Ms Beckett, if appropriate, could you give a kind of concrete, worked-through example of how the Treasury would negotiate this zero-based review? Let’s say one Department is spending money on youth clubs and another is spending money on filling in potholes; would you be asking for the same se…”

“In that process, would the Treasury then be speaking to each Department about specifically, “How many youth clubs are you procuring? How many potholes are you filling?” Would it be that detailed, or would it be more a sense of making sure that their processes are correct? What level of detail would you get?”

“Are there any examples—this is perhaps for Mr Smewing—of the green flags that you would want back from certain Departments to make sure that their youth clubs programme, let’s say, was value for money, or some red flags that would show you that it wasn’t? What kinds of examples would you want?”

“In terms of social value, or in terms of taxpayer money? What kind of evaluation would that be?”

“So it would be social value defined in terms of the impact on the taxpayers of funding over all public services provision in the longer run—if that data is possible; that is the ideal.”

“Are those specialists who you have in-house trained to deal with economic abuse in domestic abuse cases as well?”

“Do you have your own in-house team dealing with this kind of abuse?”

“On the point about training, I wanted to ask about economic abuse, and particularly domestic and financial abuse. The FCA, for example, recommends that financial firms have specialist teams dealing with this kind of abuse. I was wondering whether the FOS also has its own in-house specialist teams.”

“That is great to hear. When will that start happening, and will you publish this for all to see as well?”

“Could you say a bit more about what will change going forward and what has led to that change?”

“In terms of the data that you collect on debt collection as well as APP fraud and various other scams that you deal with, do you collect data on the protected characteristics of complainants, and other demographic data, to help to understand which groups are more at systemic risk from this kind of abuse?”

“In terms of the tactics for debt collectors and bailiffs, for example, do those kinds of complaints come to you, and is there any trend that you are seeing pre-pandemic to now?”

“I have some questions around debt collection and how FOS deals with vulnerable customers. First, on debt collection, I note that before the pandemic your organisation warned about aggressive customer service tactics in debt collection, and sometimes breaches of confidentiality from debt collectors. Given that the pande…”

“I very much take your point, particularly about the impact on women’s football. Unfortunately, that part of Reading football club was one of the first to suffer from the current ownership problem. The reason why it is so important, as Lee says, is that ambassadors from these clubs promote youth football and women’s foo…”

“Sir Ian, you mentioned that, during the pandemic, you found high levels of flat refusal.”

“I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about what two times the level of effort means in terms of the ONS’s resource. Might this be a steady state, or is it changing?”

“What is the incentive?”

“Do you have any theories about the reason behind this increase in effort? Will it be the steady state level of effort or will people change?”

“I have some questions about the future of data-gathering. Sir Ian, you mentioned the increased cost of getting people to respond on the doorstep. Is the current balance between administrative and survey data the right one for the long run, or will there be a tendency towards more use of administrative data?”