Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Chris Evans and Charlie Elphicke

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans]

I welcome any money that goes towards mental health, and I think anybody suffering from a mental health issue would welcome that as well, but I have to say this to the hon. Gentleman: I am fed up, especially as a Welsh MP and a Welshman, at the way the Welsh NHS has been attacked by this Government. It is a shame because when the Government attack the NHS in Wales, they are attacking the nurses, the doctors, the cleaners, the porters—everybody who works so hard to provide the best possible health care to our patients.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman is making a passionate and powerful speech highlighting why it is such a travesty that he is not at the forefront of the Leader of the Opposition’s team, as he should have been. Does he join me in regretting the fact that the Leader of the Opposition seems to be planning a jobs tax were Labour to get elected at the general election?

[Chris Evans]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments, and I have to say that over the years that we have served together in this House he has always been courteous to me and I count him as one of my friends from the other side.

Bankers’ Bonuses and the Banking Industry

Debate between Chris Evans and Charlie Elphicke

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), as I did last week. I hope that there will also be sufficient time to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) to follow me. I shall therefore try to ensure that my remarks are more to the point than they might otherwise have been.

I have always been a strong believer in having diversity and competition in the banking system, and I share the concern expressed by many that we have an oligopoly in our system. That is not healthy; there is not enough choice or competition. We need more competition, and I personally would be quite radical and ensure that the banks were separated up to a greater extent than they are today. It is also a concern that the establishment of the banking system in this country has meant that the banks are too big to fail. We could cure that by having depositor preference, because it would then be a matter for the bondholders, who would be much more interested in ensuring that the banks behaved and did not overpay bonuses.

What will not work is Members of this House pontificating about bonuses and what the bonus levels should be; waving a magic wand and saying that they should be this, that and the other; and trying to micro-manage banking business from afar. What makes it even worse is the way the previous Government carried on and the shameless hypocrisy of the Labour party that we have heard today. Let us not forget that the forex and LIBOR scandals happened under the previous Labour Government. Our Government have sorted out the regulatory system and have been cleaning up the mess. Under the previous Government bonuses tripled in four years and £66 billion of bonuses were paid out. The Labour party wishes to forget that. Fred Goodwin became Sir Frederick Goodwin then, and honours, baubles, bonuses and bag slaps were scattered around happily in those days. Labour now wishes to forget that. Under our Government bonuses are now a fifth of what they were then.

[Chris Evans]

Does the hon. Gentleman think the Conservative party is being wise after the event? Was it not the Conservative leader, the current Prime Minister, who argued in 2007 for less red tape and less regulation for the banking industry?

[Charlie Elphicke]

The issue is not the extent of regulation, but the format of regulation and the fact that the previous Government took the Bank of England out of the picture. The one organisation that understands the prudential nature of risk management was pushed to one side. That, together with the failure to police risk, was at the heart of what went wrong with our banking system, so I completely reject the hon. Gentleman’s point.

The Opposition say, “Let’s have a bankers’ bonus tax, so we can raise some money.” Yet again, we have heard that the Opposition want to spend it, this time on

“a guaranteed paid starter job for young people who have been out of work for over a year”.

That is what they say today but that is the 12th time over that they have spent it; I hate to correct my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), who thought it was only the 10th time and had lost count. That is understandable, because previously the Opposition have spent this on: the youth jobs guarantee; reversing the VAT increase; more capital spending; reversing the child benefit savings; reversing tax credit savings; more money for the regional growth fund; cutting the deficit; turning empty shops into community centres; spending more on public services; building 25,000 new houses; and free child care. Now it is being spent on starter jobs for young people, but perhaps next week it might be spent on houses again—who knows? It just depends on the thing of the moment, does it not? That underlines the ludicrousness of the Opposition’s position: they simply cannot add up and cannot spend their various banking bonus tax ideas in any competent way at all.

Leaving that aside, the permanent bank levy introduced by this Government is expected to raise £2.9 billion in 2015-16 and then £2.8 billion each year thereafter. That is more than was raised by the one-off bonus tax introduced by the previous Government. I suspect what will happen is that the Labour party will end up with its madcap plans raising less money and the party then being in a quandary as to where to spend it, because it has committed it on multiple occasions. That goes to the heart of the massive contradictions of Labour policy making.

The one thing I want to touch on is the idea that we should have the European Union decide on the levels of pay, bonuses or indeed anything in this country. Let me gently remind the Opposition of a couple of things. First, we are an independent nation. Secondly, we have an independent currency—we are not part of the eurozone. I do not understand why the Opposition think it is a good idea to have the European Union tell us how to manage our banking system. We are competent enough as a country—goodness knows, we have run our own affairs for the past 1,000 years—to decide how we should organise our banking system, and pay, bonuses and bonus taxes in our banking system, without needing help from the European Union.

Fuel Prices and the Cost of Living

Debate between Chris Evans and Charlie Elphicke

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a privilege and honour to follow the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who made an entertaining, engaging and thoughtful speech on this issue, which we all feel strongly about. It has been an emotional debate on both sides of the House. Constituents write to me daily expressing concern about the cost of living and how they will manage, given the way the cost of fuel has risen in recent times. It is a just concern that is understood on both sides of the House. Hauliers in my constituency write to me expressing grave concern about the situation they find themselves in and their ability to compete with operators on the continent who undercut them.

However, I must say that for the Opposition to bring forward such a motion is the most extraordinary and shameless opportunism I can recall seeing in this House. It is shameful because we know that the Labour party increased duty 12 times in its period in office. We know that it took away the 10p tax rate. We know that tax discs went through the roof, and we know that the haulage industry was decimated in the last decade because the Labour Government had no interest or desire to ensure that that industry was safeguarded.

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the most damning verdict on the coalition’s first year in government was when someone wrote to me and said, “Mr Evans, thanks to the increase in VAT on fuel duty, I’m worse off than I was a year ago”? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that most people in this country are worse off than they were a year ago?

[Charlie Elphicke]

Measures taken by this Government will take 800,000 of the poorest people in the land out of tax. The Chancellor is not in his place today; I hope very much that he is working out how he can look after the least well-off people in this country in his Budget. I hope that he will be listening and thinking carefully about how he can engage with people’s understandable concern about the cost of fuel and how the country can be put right after 10 years of being driven into the international sidings.