Dame Meg Hillier

The hon. Gentleman anticipates a further area of my speech. I believe very firmly in devolution, but there are some caveats. That is something that we may consider. Of course, I chair the Treasury Committee, but I do not make all the decisions for the Committee—it is not an autocracy, unless its members choose to make it that way—so we will discuss that issue. On housing, there are areas that are too detailed to go into the Budget, but I hope there is some discussion in the forthcoming spending review about system-built housing. In Murray Grove in Hoxton, in my constituency, some millennium products built by Peabody still stand the test of time. They were system-built offsite, which reduces the cost of construction and makes it faster, but we do not have enough throughput in the factories that do this for them to survive and thrive. That is a potential opportunity for us in the UK. The Chancellor has a huge challenge. We are facing very difficult fiscal circumstances, but the wider picture is that we are seeing some green shoots of hope. According to early estimates, the economy grew by 1.8% year on year in the three months to August—the fastest pace since the country was rebounding from the pandemic in 2022. GDP has grown at an annualised pace of 2.7% so far in 2026, with early estimates indicating that growth has continued into the third quarter, and productivity has grown by more than 1% per worker in every quarter since the end of 2024. There is a degree of hope that if we keep stability and keep focused, we will meet some of the challenges.