Global Economy

Debate between Baroness O'Cathain and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Thursday 11th August 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Chancellor’s Statement. I have a copy of it here. One of the things that stands out is:

“We need an international framework that allows creditor countries like China to increase demand and debtor countries to make the difficult adjustments necessary to repay them”.

I should like to ask: what are the chances of this happening? What is the mechanism? Is it the autumn meeting of the IMF and the G20? I come back to my point about what the chances are. There is no question that if we could stimulate China to increase its demand for products from our country and Europe, we would be well on the way to restoring the confidence of our small and medium-sized enterprises to get more involved in that market. Leading directly on from that, my noble friend said that more supporting measures will be produced in the autumn. Can I make a plea on behalf of small and medium-sized enterprises for something to be done to limit the huge burden of regulation, which disproportionately falls on small and medium-sized enterprises? They wish to carry on but find international trade really difficult.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, the Chancellor’s Statement sustained the spin around the safe haven notion. I wondered whether the Minister has seen the comments of Jonathan Portes, the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Last week, he said that if you thought that what was driving low gilt yields was us being perceived as a safe haven, you would see a significant rise in the pound and we just have not seen that. He added:

“The reason people are marking down gilt yields is because the economy is weak”.

Is not the problem, as my noble friend Lord Eatwell has said, a lack of growth? Is it not true that, as a result of the decisions that this Government have made, we will see an additional £46 billion-worth of borrowing than was predicted a few months ago, and is it not important that the Government decided to slow down the rate of deficit reduction so that there is room, for example, to spend money on sustaining police numbers and keeping prisons open so that we can deal with the public disorder which we have been debating today?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness O'Cathain and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer and my noble friend Lord Bach. It is important in bringing together those parts of the country that believe that they are exceptional and should be added to the two exceptions that were already in the Bill and the Isle of Wight, which has subsequently been added by your Lordships. At the root of that is the argument, as we have just heard from my noble friend Lord Myners, that some parts of the country have a particular character and are fiercely proud of it, and that they think that that should be recognised in their parliamentary boundaries.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, I have listened avidly to the discussion about Cornwall. As somebody who came to this country about 46 years ago, I have always thought that it is wonderful to have local involvement in politics, but that has been on the basis of local people getting involved in local or parish councils. Representatives from those local areas have had a wider vision of the contribution that their area could make to the national situation. That is how we came to vote for our MPs. It is wonderful to visit every part of this United Kingdom and to walk around looking at local cathedrals et cetera.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness O'Cathain]

I make one observation again. There are the examples of Liverpool and Everton and of Celtic and Rangers. It is a situation where we are actually having tensions within an area, where we are all supposed to be part of—dare I say it?—a big society, and where we help one another irrespective of boundaries.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I am delighted and slightly stunned to have stimulated such debate on day 13 of this Committee that I managed to get four interventions on the trot without being able to respond to them—and here comes another.