Finance committee  What do we try to do? We try to do it, essentially, through an R and D tax credit, which is at least the appropriate instrument. Whether it's precisely well articulated has always been a question. I am on the board of a small firm. It certainly is critical to us in terms of makin

Finance committee  I think we've always understood that we would need a period of essentially zero growth in order to rebalance demand and supply. We thought that a year ago. What happened in the intervening period is that we actually had stronger demand than we had anticipated, so that period of z

Finance committee  I don't think anyone likes paying taxes, but the taxes are there to pay for the services the government delivers and to allow government, on its part, to make the investments in its services and in the future of its services and, at the same time, to ensure that it has a tax stru

Finance committee  Look, we faced a situation in March 2020 where we really didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know what COVID was going to do and how we were going to control it. You sat here in 2020 and you had to make decisions, the government had to make decisions, on how to deal w

Finance committee  Technological change will help us eventually, but we have to make the investment first before we get the benefits down the line. It's a very hard message, because we don't like—none of us like—to give up some of our income or defer some of our income in order to be in a good posi

Finance committee  Absolutely, and it still is.

Finance committee  That I just don't know. All I think that's really important to note and remember is that for 30 years since the wall came down, we have had a tremendous advantage of being able to divert resources from production of war goods into production of goods and services for ordinary Can

Finance committee  Yes, it is an unfortunate fact of life that indeed, if you're going to deliver a service, there's a real cost to delivering that service. For some of those services that collectively we look to governments to provide—in particular health, education and security services—the cost

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. How to go about that precisely is a more nuanced thing. Essentially, what we need at the moment are relatively larger investment tax credits to encourage the reinvestment of retained earnings. That's number one. Number two, governments need revenue to do all th

Finance committee  Yes, they are, and that's an ongoing issue of supply. It comes back to the issue we were all discussing earlier about productivity. Unless we can get the output per worker or the output per unit of invested capital up, then, indeed, we have a problem. The first thing that happens

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  It's a long-standing problem we've had in this country: low capital investment. That's both in terms of machinery and equipment per worker, where we slide down relative to other countries, in particular, the United States, and in what you might call the R and D side or the innova

Finance committee  Once you lose control, and once people feel that inflation is not in control, then it actually requires much more effort to keep it down or get it back than when people have confidence. I think it's absolutely true that at the moment the level of confidence—certainly the level of

Finance committee  I don't think any government has an easy time in balancing the budget. It doesn't matter what government it is. It doesn't matter when it is. That is always true. This is particularly difficult at the moment, as I tried to point out in my opening remarks, because governments nee

Finance committee  Everywhere and always, trade barriers are bad in the sense that they raise the real cost of producing goods and services, they reduce competition and they encourage monopoly, all of which are bad for the consumer, for productivity and for the economy. Yes, everywhere and always,