Centenary of the Battle of the Somme

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the moving speech from the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson) about the Scottish regiments’ contribution to the Somme and about what we should always bear in mind in the House when we commemorate the dreadful events of 100 years ago.

It is right that we commemorate the Somme on 1 July. We will be doing so in my Sussex constituency of Horsham, in the town itself, in Crawley Down and in other villages and towns around the constituency. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) referred to the battle beginning on 1 July, but of course the preceding artillery barrage started on 24 June—[Interruption]—as he is now reminding us. The barrage grew in intensity until, by 1 July, it could be heard on the Sussex coast.

The Somme campaign involved a series of related engagements, however, and it is on one of them that I want to touch briefly. Even before 1 July, some of our forces were going over the top. A diversionary attack was launched on 30 June, the day before the battle, at 3.5 am. It took place away from the Somme, in the Richebourg sector, at an emplacement known as the Boar’s Head, and was designed to persuade the Germans that the real thrust was coming from elsewhere. It was conducted by three battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment—the Southdown Battalions: the 11th Battalion, in a support role, suffered 116 casualties; the 12th Battalion suffered 429 casualties; and the 13th Battalion, which was destroyed, suffered 800 killed, wounded or captured.

In that engagement, which lasted five hours, no fewer than 12 sets of brothers were killed. The battle mimicked what would happen the next day on the Somme. In horrific fighting, the troops advanced on prepared positions and captured the frontline. In fact, they captured a notice, written helpfully in English, that read, “Welcome Sussex boys. We’ve been waiting days for you”. The battle followed a three-day artillery barrage. They held the frontline and penetrated right through to the support trenches, which they held for four hours, before a complete shortage of ammunition forced them to withdraw. There was terrific heroism. The company sergeant major, Nelson Carter, was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

The people of Sussex know that, for understandable reasons, their battle will always take second place to the carnage the following day on the Somme—the battle of Boar’s Head does not even feature in the official history of the war, despite the losses and the valour—but in proposing today’s motion, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) mentioned that one of the many emotions that went through our soldiers’ minds as they went over the top was pride in their neighbourhoods. I wanted to put it on the record that the neighbourhoods and the county of Sussex still take huge pride in those men. Sussex will always remember 30 June 1916 as the day that Sussex died.

UK Economy

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I was going to say that it is a pleasure to speak in this afternoon’s debate, but that is not really how it feels. I am not the baby of the House, but I am among its younger Members, and for the 33 years in which I have been alive I have grown up in a country that is part of the European Union. Part of its character is a confident, open, outward-looking nation that looks to the world with optimism, confidence and strength.

Although I respect the result and the verdict of the voters last week, I cannot disguise my bitter disappointment with the result. It has put this country on a fundamentally different course for this century from the one we were previously on. We have already seen the economic impact of that decision, and we have seen some of the political repercussions of it, too. Probably more worrying than anything else about last week’s result is the sense that our political leaders have yet to find adequate answers to the questions that have been thrown up by the leave vote.

I represent an outer London constituency on the Essex border, and many of the people I represent travel in on the Central line to work in the City of London, and many of them will be worried about the future of their jobs. We have already seen the announcement of thousands of jobs potentially moving abroad into the eurozone, and we hear rumblings about other jobs set to go elsewhere. Communities, including those that voted overwhelmingly to leave, are seeing the consequences of their decisions, with a loss of the inward investment that delivers jobs—whether it be investment in car manufacturing in the north-east or investment to bail out the steel industry in Neath Port Talbot.

Without feeling too bitter about the result or finger-wagging at people who have reached different conclusions, I cannot but say—and am deeply sorry to say—to those who attacked Stronger In and its advocates for prosecuting “Project Fear”, especially those in the House and in the officially designated Leave campaign, that it looks increasingly likely that it was “Project Fact”, whether we are talking about instability in the currency or the markets, or about decisions that have already been made in the space of a few days that will relocate jobs, change people’s lives, and affect communities for the worse.

As far as I am concerned, the Conservative leadership contest cannot come soon enough. I relish the prospect of seeing the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) at the Dispatch Box, because I want him—along with his right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and other Conservative Members who prosecuted those arguments—to live up to the promises that were made. I want them to live up to the promise of £350 million for the national health service, the promises about immigration, and every other promise that they made to the British people, which, in good faith, those people believed when they voted leave. This place must deliver accountability if we are to place any trust or any faith in politics.

When those Members assume the reins of power—and some of them are already in that position—they should expect Labour and, I suspect, Conservative Members to hold them to account for the promises that they made. If I had been a leave voter and I found that my job was at risk, or that immigration had not changed substantially in the way I had been promised, or that there was not £350 million for the NHS or anything remotely like it, I would feel very betrayed and let down—and so many of those who are members of my generation or younger do feel let down, because they will bear the consequences of this decision for longer than anyone else.

I cannot recall any other issue on which there has been such an overwhelming economic consensus, among this country’s leading economists and economists around the world, that in the longer term this country will not be as well off as it might have been: not poorer than it is today, perhaps, but certainly not as well off as it might have been. Why should we be concerned about that? If our country is not as well off as it might have been, in communities like the one in which I grew up—in communities like my council estate in the London borough of Tower Hamlets, and other working-class communities throughout the country—it will not be the wealthiest who feel the impact in their pockets, but the poorest.

When businesses do not have as much custom, as much trade or as much inward investment from around the world, it will not be the mighty global players that are affected; they will simply take their business elsewhere. It will be the small and medium-sized enterprises. It will be the hard-working people who take the risk, who take the plunge and set up a business, who work their fingers to the bone, day in day out, to turn a profit and provide a home and an income for their families. Those are the people who will pay the price of this decision. So forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I feel somewhat angry about that.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his powerful and effective contribution to the debate. I also congratulate him on what he said about airport expansion during the Chancellor’s speech. Whatever our future constitutional position, we shall need to make whatever decisions we can to get the country moving, to show that we have momentum, and to encourage inward investors back into the UK.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful for that intervention. In the short time during which I have been in the House, I have been appalled by the extent to which party-political self-interest has slammed the brakes on vital infrastructure decisions to secure the future economic wellbeing of our nation, or even our national security. The Government should allow votes on airport expansion, on our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent, and on other major, vital infrastructure projects to keep our country safe and prosperous. We cannot continue to allow such crucial decisions to be sacrificed on the altar of party-political management, not least when the attempts that are made appear to be futile.

We are not just seeing a fundamental change in the role of Britain in the EU; I think that we may be looking at the break-up of the United Kingdom. I am thinking not just about Scotland, but about the huge achievement that was made in Northern Ireland, from the Downing Street declaration under John Major to the Good Friday agreement under Tony Blair. The Northern Irish peace process itself could be put at risk because of the way in which this debate has been handled. It is troubling that, days after the referendum, there are still no answers to some of the critical questions that have been asked about how we are to move forward as a country.

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[Huw Merriman]

I am not—not least because the point has just been made for me—but I am well aware of that fact, and it is one of the reasons that I am feeling positive. My point is that, at the time, people feel terrible but history judges that things might not have been quite as bad as they feared. I certainly take my hon. Friend’s point.

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers certainly brought out the worst emotions in people, as well as some of the better ones. I can recall three stages of behaviour. There were those who lost their heads, those who wielded the knife and those who put their heads down and tried to work through the chaos.

[Jeremy Quin]

rose—

[Huw Merriman]

I will give way to my hon. Friend, because I know that he had similar experiences at that time.

[Jeremy Quin]

I did indeed. I worked in Her Majesty’s Treasury for the then Government, who are now the Opposition.

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

That was your fault.

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[Jeremy Quin]

I can assure the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) that I arrived here to help after the events in question. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) mentioned the fact that the markets have bounced back, and it is good that they have done so, but we should all be aware that they will be volatile and they will fluctuate. They will go up and down, but what matters is the long-term momentum in our economy and particularly our ability to attract ongoing inward investment. Our minds must soon turn to how we can ensure that that tap has not been turned off, either through infrastructure investment or through fiscal measures to encourage investment into our country.

[Huw Merriman]

My hon. Friend has great experience in these matters and I agree with everything he has just said. I shall now press on because I am conscious of the time.

I was talking about the three emotional states that I came across during the events of 2008, and the best of those was demonstrated by those who put their heads down and tried to work through the chaos. Being a believer in such action, I stayed on with the Lehman Brothers estate for seven years to manage the team of lawyers that was dealing with the claims, worth tens of billions, that were made against the estate as well as those that the estate made against other trading entities. For 18 months, I led a team dealing with a multibillion-pound case against a large international bank that had locked up our custodial assets to use against its own claim. Rather than litigate across the globe, we negotiated with the bank and ended up settling to both parties’ satisfaction, drawing up a new trading agreement to continue future business. I hope that that is a metaphor for what can be achieved with our European partners. As a result of that success, Lehman Brothers claimants, who originally feared getting only 10p in the £1, will end up with nearer £1.50. It became such a sound and safe investment that we struggled to get claimants to take their money out because they wanted interest to continue to accrue.

I use that example because, at the time, the situation looked hopeless to staff and financial stakeholders alike, and I recognise that that is how much of our population sees the UK’s plight following the referendum. I hope that, over time and with the right team in place, a better outcome can be delivered for the UK. Only time will tell whether our economy will be stronger outside the European Union than inside, but what is in our hands is putting in place an experienced civil service team with the qualities to deliver for the UK and then giving them the time and space to come up with a strategy and allowing them to implement it. While we have discussed many of the trading principles that we would like to see in place, I urge the House to think more soberly about the type of people that we have to fight for them. From experience, I would say that that is as important as the cause itself.

That approach, with sufficient transparency in the process, is what will give the population the reassurance that they so badly need at this uncertain time. I look forward to calls from across the House saying that the House should work together and add all its experience and support to the process, so that we can support all the people in this country.

The Economy and Work

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The deficit has come down by another £16 billion. When I first stood at the Dispatch Box as Chancellor of the Exchequer we had a budget deficit of close to 11% of our national income, and £1 in every £4 that we spent on everything from hospitals to schools and police had to be borrowed. This year that figure is projected to be below 3%, and we are projected to have a surplus by the end of this Parliament.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

Will the Chancellor also remind the House what he has managed to do to employment rates in this country while cutting the deficit?

[Mr Osborne]

A record number of people are in work and we have created almost 2.5 million jobs in this economy. Yesterday at the end of my remarks I referred to a report that the Labour party has produced on its future. This independent inquiry is chaired by the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas). Let us see what Labour says about Labour:

“A tsunami of aspirant voters sank Labour…Voters abandoned Labour because they believed Labour lacked economic credibility…the perception was that it would be profligate in government… Labour is losing its working-class support… Labour has marched away from the views of voters… Labour is becoming a toxic brand.”

That is the Labour party’s own verdict on the Labour party. It concludes by saying—

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[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate on the Gracious Speech. I am conscious of the time, so I shall be as brief as I can. Before I talk about the measures contained within this Queen’s Speech, it might be worth reflecting on what is missing from it, particularly in economic terms: an alternative to Tory austerity; real action on productivity, innovation, trade and exports; and addressing the crying need for genuine inclusive growth so that people do not fall further behind and the UK does not forgo GDP growth as it has in the past over decades as a result of rising inequality. All that is absent. As to the most important steps that should have been included in this programme for government, the Government could and should have sought to reverse the damaging impact of austerity, to reverse inequality and to stop cuts to our vital public services, which actually promote a positive economic impact. Again, all those things are missing.

It is almost as if this Tory Government are so consumed with bitter in-fighting over Europe and the EU referendum that they have pared back this legislative programme to the bare minimum required to give even the vaguest impression of a Government who are still functioning—not matter how rotten and divided they are over Europe.

The Gracious Speech could have announced an emergency summer Budget, putting an end to all the austerity that has strangled economic growth and seen the Chancellor fail to meet every single target across his key economic indicators: debt, deficit, borrowing, trade and exports. We could have had an economic plan comprising a series of economic measures to usher in an inclusive, prosperous economy through investment in infrastructure and key public services. We could have had signalled flagged-up provision for a modest increase in public expenditure. As we argued at the election, 0.5% could release something in the order of £150 billion for investment in infrastructure and our public services—spending to grow the economy, while ensuring that public sector debt and deficit continue to fall over the Parliament. That would have been sustainable and fiscally responsible.

[Jeremy Quin]

Will the hon. Gentleman enlighten us as to whether the Scottish Parliament has any plans for an emergency Budget by using the tax-raising powers it now has?

[Stewart Hosie]

We are using every single power available to us, and we will use all our powers over taxation when they come. How we choose to do that will be a matter for the Scottish Government. What I suspect we will not do is to impose a 5% increase on the poorest workers in Scotland, which was a plan posited by others and led them to come third in the election.

This Queen’s Speech could have been used for the delivery of vital and urgent aid to support trade and exports, and for measures to stimulate investment and growth to turn round what is now recognised in the real world as this Chancellor’s failed stewardship of the economy, which has seen the trade deficit widen to its worst level since the crisis in 2008 and will see the Treasury miss by £300 billion its own target of doubling exports to £1 trillion by the end of this decade.

We could and should have had a fair tax Bill, simplifying the UK tax system and delivering greater tax transparency; and, vitally, measures such as a moratorium on this Government’s programme of HMRC office closures. We should have had the establishment of an independent commission to simplify the tax code and strengthen tax transparency by guaranteeing that beneficial ownership of businesses and trusts—here, in the Crown dependencies and in the overseas territories—would be made fully public.

We should have had an energy security and investment Bill, facilitating an export-led sustainable energy sector. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig) said, we should have had a comprehensive strategic review of tax rates and investment allowances in the North sea. In addition, we should have had a review of securing the future energy supply of the UK and an ending of the UK Government’s commitment to the failing Hinkley C nuclear project. We should have been directing investment instead into renewable energy and into carbon, capture and storage. Those, among other initiatives, would have formed the basis of solid economic proposals to grow the economy. What we ended up with in economic terms was a digital economy Bill, a criminal finances Bill and a better markets Bill. I shall deal briefly with those Bills.

We understand the benefit of digital connectivity and welcome the roll-out of superfast broadband, which has the potential to boost productivity. According to a Deloitte report commissioned by the Scottish Futures Trust last year, increased digitisation could boost the Scottish economy alone by around £13 billion. Increased digitisation and reach across Scotland would also have a direct impact on improving productivity, business creation, jobs, earnings, exports and tax revenues—and many more positive outcomes for public provision. The report suggested that if Scotland were to become a world leader, we could see a significant increase in GDP, something in the order of 6,000 extra small and home-based enterprises and potentially an extra 175,000 jobs by the end of the decade.

We therefore welcome moves by the UK Government to provide digital infrastructure, but we are unconvinced that this digital economy Bill will turn round the UK’s persistently poor productivity levels in the way that it might have done. We are particularly unconvinced about whether the implementation of this digital plan, particularly the broadband roll-out, will deliver—not least because we have evidence that the UK Government have failed in this regard before.

As long ago as July 2013 the National Audit Office reported on the Government’s then broadband programme, saying that broadband roll-out was 22 months late. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee reported last year that the UK’s target dates for broadband had been changed many times, raising concerns that the target for delivering superfast broadband to even 95% of the UK was in jeopardy—in other words, not very good with targets at all. We nevertheless welcome the UK Government’s commitment to introducing a universal service obligation, not least because it was in the SNP manifesto and we believe that if it can be fulfilled, it would bring particular benefits to rural communities.

We welcome, too, Government moves to tackle corruption, money laundering and tax evasion, but the criminal finances Bill does not go far enough to combat this systemic problem. Following the release of the Panama papers, my right hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) called on the Prime Minister to go further with measures to crack down on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, pointing out that illicit cross-border transfer financial flows are estimated at around £1 trillion a year, which is 10 times more than global foreign aid budgets combined. We believe that the Prime Minister and the Government should prioritise bilateral tax treaties, not least with places such as Panama and other tax havens, as part of the global efforts to co-ordinate better against tax avoidance.

Furthermore, we call on the UK Government to embolden compliance by guaranteeing that the beneficial ownership of companies and trusts is made fully public. It is also the case, as I alluded to earlier, that the UK has one of the most complicated tax codes in the world. That leads to a loss of tax yield and perpetuates opportunities to exploit loopholes. We have called on the Government to bring about a just tax system, which will assist in ensuring that all taxpayers are given a fair deal.

In our alternative Queen’s Speech, we call for the Treasury to convene a commission and report back within two years, following a comprehensive consultation on the simplification of the tax code. With a simplified—not a flat tax code—tax system, the Government could boost yield, encourage compliance, and avoid exploitative loopholes such as the Mayfair loophole. While we welcome the long-overdue measures by the UK Government to tackle corruption, money laundering and tax evasion, we wait with interest to see the detail of these measures.

Whatever good may come of this, however, the counterproductive decision to close 137 HMRC offices will strip local businesses and individuals throughout the United Kingdom of the support that they need to ensure that they comply with the law. If they are to tackle tax avoidance at all levels and continue to provide local support when it is needed, the UK Government must place a moratorium on HMRC office closures. We take the view that, by and large, individuals and business want to contribute to society by paying tax, and that a high proportion of the SME tax gap—caused not by fraud, but by genuine error and miscommunication—could be dealt with by removing the threat to local offices. It is extraordinary that, although tax compliance is now at the heart of much of our economic debate as it has not been for decades, the HMRC workforce have been cut by 20% since 2010.

The final Bill that comes under the broad heading of “the economy” is the better markets Bill, whose main purported benefits are to give consumers more power and choice through faster switching and more protection when things go wrong. That is welcome. The Bill would simplify the way in which economic regulators operate to make life more straightforward for business and cut red tape, and would also speed up the decisions of the Competition and Markets Authority for the benefit of businesses and consumers alike. That too is welcome.

The intention is to deliver a manifesto commitment to increase competition and consumer choice, particularly in the energy market. However, while we welcome Government moves to challenge rising energy prices by encouraging market choice, the Bill does not go far enough to combat the problem of fuel poverty at a structural level. According to the UK means of calculating fuel poverty, in 2014 some 2.5 million households were in fuel poverty. According to the methods used in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, over the last three or four years the figures have sat between 30% and 40%. The structural issue here is not a shortage of gas or electricity, it is not necessarily a shortage of competition, and it is not necessarily the ability to change suppliers quickly; it is a shortage of money to pay for the gas and electricity coming into the house.

I am sure that there are good intentions behind many of the economic measures in the Gracious Speech, but they are simply too little, too late.

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[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

It is, as ever, a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin), and I am grateful to him for his advice. As a neo-classicist myself, I now know that I need to keep an eye on my variables. I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for saying that it is an even greater pleasure for Conservative Members to know that there is now an effective Opposition in the Scottish Parliament, keeping an eye on his colleagues and what they are up to, up north.

I listened to every word of not only the hon. Gentleman’s speech but that of the shadow Chancellor. I do not know whether the shadow Chancellor rehearses his speeches in front of his colleagues, but, if so, he may have allowed himself a wry smile when he referred to the need to replace old worn-out infrastructure with something more effective. Having read “Labour’s Future”—a very Little Red Book!—I can only imagine that the shadow Chancellor’s advisers, Messrs Fischer and Varoufakis, have got their work cut out in the years ahead.

In the short time that remains to me, I want to say some positive things about what is a very positive Gracious Speech. I serve on the Financial Inclusion Commission, an honour that I share with the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan), and I am particularly interested in the way in which the Government are setting out to improve financial inclusion and resilience. The scale of the problem, highlighted by an excellent paper published earlier this week by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Financial Inclusion Commission, is immense, but the Government are taking positive steps.

I welcome fee-free basic bank accounts, the lifetime ISA and the continuing successful roll-out of auto-enrolment, but I particularly welcome the Help to Save scheme, from which up to 3.5 million low-paid workers could benefit. I do not for one second underestimate the difficulty, for many families, of saving £50 a month, but from my experience of credit unions I know that some do, and if they do it through that scheme, they will be better off to the tune of £1,200. I welcome the scheme for its direct impact, but I welcome it even more for the culture of financial resilience that it could provide. Curbs on payday lending will get us only so far. Any step that helps to boost resilience, and thereby reduces demand for those crippling services, is to be welcomed.

Our main focus, however, must be on encouraging resilience by promoting national economic growth, and the Gracious Speech is imbued with policies that will enhance productivity. As has been mentioned a number of times during the debate, establishing a legal right to broadband connections will enhance productivity, and will also aid financial and social inclusion.

The Government’s commitment to transport is well founded. The performance of Horsham’s local rail operator, Govia Thameslink Railway—not helped by the current industrial action—is woeful, but I recognise the Government’s commitment to investment in the line.

In the context of transport and productivity, the Davies commission made an unequivocal recommendation in favour of Heathrow. It said that Gatwick would deliver half the economic benefit, that it had insufficient transport connections, and that it would fail to provide the hub airport that Britain needs. For the sake of our national productivity, let us get on with expanding Heathrow.

Finally, let me welcome fair funding for schools. It will assist the recruitment of maths and other STEM teachers in West Sussex, and it will help to drive future productivity, enable us to create a generation throughout the country who are better equipped to seize the opportunities that the Government are creating, and boost financial inclusion and resilience.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Monday 11th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have just had a speech from the Financial Secretary which puts a very positive spin on the Finance Bill. Although he sought to put a positive spin also on the measures announced by the Prime Minister today on tax avoidance, his speech shed no further light on the critical issue of offshore trusts and the need for a public register of beneficial ownership. It fell far short of the measures that we announced today in our tax transparency and enforcement programme.

The House is back after three weeks of turmoil at the top of the Tory Government which has called into question the competence and credibility of the Prime Minister and his senior Ministers. They were in trouble even before the Business Secretary’s inept handling of the crisis at Port Talbot. Since then we have had a week of ducking and diving from the Prime Minister over revelations in the Panama papers. What the Prime Minister showed today was that he and his colleagues can get top marks for talking the talk, but when it comes to walking the walk their scorecard is far less impressive.

The Bill seeks to put into law the tax-related measures set out in the Budget, and what a Budget it was. The author of the omnishambles surpassed himself and delivered a mega-shambles. No Budget has unravelled as quickly or as comprehensively as this one. It was a Budget that failed to add up. As we begin to debate the Bill, we do so against the backdrop of a huge, gaping black hole, with estimates of a figure of £12 billion or more that has yet to be funded. The Chancellor was faced with the real prospect of a revolt and his Budget not passing. Within days the main revenue-raising policy—cuts in personal independence payments for over 300,000 disabled people—proved too much even for the Work and Pensions Secretary. His parting shot, aimed at the Chancellor, complained of a Tory Government heading in a direction that divides society, rather than uniting it. The Budget and this Finance Bill have unfairness at their very core.

We will be voting against the Bill tonight, because it fails the fairness test and the test of adequately investing for our future. The Bill cuts corporation tax, which is already the lowest in the G7, while the Budget cuts support for working people, leaving over 2 million families, on average, £1,600 worse off a year by 2020. The Bill cuts capital gains tax, which benefits the wealthiest, at a time when the Chancellor has failed to meet his own deficit and debt reduction targets. How can it be fair, at this time, to fund tax breaks for his friends on the backs of the poor and the vulnerable?

Growth has been revised down last year, this year and every year of this forecast, and so too have business investment and productivity. The Chancellor is set to miss his export target by more than 14 years. Growth in average wages is being revised down while household debt is going up. He has admitted failure on his key targets. He has breached his own welfare cap. The Government are set to borrow £38.5 billion more than planned, and public sector net investment is set to fall as a share of GDP over this Parliament.

This is a recovery built on sand, and it is not just us saying it. The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) told readers of ConservativeHome that, for all the Chancellor’s talk about investment in export-led growth,

“the growth our economy has seen… comes courtesy of debt-fuelled consumption and a renewed housing and property boom.”

It is young people who are being punished by those choices. A recent YMCA survey of young people found that 41% said that debt was the biggest issue facing their family in 2016—so much for a Budget for the next generation.

The Chancellor has singularly failed to rebalance the economy, and that failure has implications for this Finance Bill. The Bill contains a series of tax cuts that he simply cannot afford. The £12 billion estimate does not include new figures published in an answer to a written parliamentary question, revealing that the Tories’ plans to force every school to become an academy could cost £1.3 billion, yet just £140 million was allocated for those plans, leaving a funding shortfall of more than £1.1 billion.

Before the Government seek once again to hide behind the turbulent conditions in the world economy, as the Minister attempted to do, let us be clear that most of the problems are of the Chancellor’s own making. We needed a Finance Bill that builds the foundations of a strong economy and that is the basis for prosperity and security for Britain’s families and businesses. We did not get it. Of course, there are some positive measures, such as anti-avoidance measures and industry support measures, that we broadly welcome. Support for the oil and gas industry and the quality of apprenticeships— 30% of apprentices currently appear not to complete their apprenticeships—are issues that we will want to explore further, along with tackling frequent tax avoiders. But these measures do not go far enough, as I will highlight later.

There is little good news for manufacturing, and no coherent overall industrial strategy, which of course includes the needs of the steel industry.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

While the hon. Lady is in a positive frame of mind, would she like to welcome the significant increase in employment over the past few years and the fact that the deficit has been cut by such a large proportion?

[Seema Malhotra]

The hon. Gentleman says that I am in a positive frame of mind. I normally am, but I am just very concerned about the economy. Perhaps he will raise the Resolution Foundation’s finding that, as a result of the measures in the Budget, the poorest 20% of the population are set to be £565 worse off, while the richest 30% are set to be £280 better off. Perhaps he will think about his constituents and how they are set to suffer as a result of the Budget before he makes another intervention.

I was talking about the steel industry.

[Jeremy Quin]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Seema Malhotra]

I will just continue on steel, because it is important also to talk about what is missing from the Bill. This is a serious missed opportunity to provide greater support for manufacturing and steel. The collapse of the steel industry could cost the Government £4.6 billion over the next 10 years. Some 40,000 jobs could be lost, devastating steel-making communities and industries that depend on British steel.

We welcome today’s news that a buyer has been found for Tata’s Scunthorpe steel plant, and we congratulate Unite, Community, the GMB and others who played an important role in the negotiations leading to that deal. However, against that background comes the revelation of a U-turn on business rates by the Chancellor. Before the Budget, the Engineering Employers Federation made a strong case for giving companies an allowance on business rates for plant and machinery, which could have applied to assets such as the blast furnaces in the steel sector. However, we learned from The Times that although the Chancellor was planning to act, he then pulled plans to give Britain’s struggling factories tax relief on business rates.

Why did he do that? The answer, analysts suggest, is that British manufacturing has been sacrificed on the altar of the Chancellor’s obsession with getting a £10 billion Budget surplus in the final year of this Parliament. We wait to see what actually materialises from today’s statement and what actual support comes forward from the Government, particularly for Port Talbot.

The Office for Budget Responsibility revealed that the decision was taken so late that there was no time to change the calculations in its economic and fiscal forecast. That means that its forecast for the level of business investment in this Parliament could well be an overestimate.

Families in Britain are to suffer as a result of another missed opportunity—on housing. By 2025, nine out of 10 Britons under 35 on modest incomes will not be able to afford a home. Rents in the private sector are soaring. So much, again, for a Budget for the next generation.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

How time flies. It was only late last year that the Secretary of State was buoyed up by the Chancellor’s announcement that he had found a few extra billion quid down the back of his settee. The Secretary of State came to the House and offered no less than a guaranteed budget for every council. Sadly, as the Financial Times put it recently, the good times lasted only about a month. By February, the Chancellor was thousands of miles away in Shanghai. From there, he announced to the British people that there would have to be more cuts. Did no one remind him of the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”? Yes, it is a curse. As we now know, the Budget is a mega-shambles, but in China the Chancellor was blaming foreigners for his problems. He said that the EU was flatlining, the Chinese economy was failing to grow and petrol prices were collapsing everywhere.

Today’s retreat means that there is a financial hole of a further £4 billion in the Government’s accounts. No explanation has been given as to how that hole will be filled. More importantly, we have been reminded this weekend by the resigning Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that there is an ethical hole, a moral vacuum, at the Government’s core.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman seems completely oblivious to what is going on elsewhere in the world. The fact is that trends are happening in the world economy that will be reflected here in the UK. The Chancellor has cut the deficit by two thirds. Surely the hon. Gentleman would welcome that.

[Jon Trickett]

The hon. Gentleman will not get away with that. The truth is that this Chancellor has been in charge of the nation’s finances for six years and he now wants to wash his hands of the mess he is making of the economy.

I was talking about an ethical hole at the Government’s core. We still remember Conservative Members cheering last Wednesday. They thought it was okay to rob the benefits of the most vulnerable for the purpose of cutting taxes for the better-off. It is not only the cuts to the welfare budget that illustrate the Government’s willingness to attack the poor; it is also the cuts to local government. Furthermore, the way in which the cuts are being distributed across local government equally illustrates the ethical hole that I have described. Those councils that face the greatest social needs are now suffering the greatest grant reductions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s support for deficit reduction. It is good to have her back. I must remind her, however, that in the last Parliament she voted against virtually every single deficit reduction measure the Government took. We have a big programme of infrastructure investment worth £100 billion over the course of this Parliament, which includes transport infrastructure and other measures that will help her constituents and people across the country.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

As the IMF has just been mentioned, does the Chief Secretary agree that its statement last week that we have

“delivered robust growth, record high employment, a significant reduction in fiscal deficits, and increased financial sector resilience”

is all good news that we should be welcoming? There is more to be done and I wonder whether he is looking forward to the pearls of wisdom that might come from the Opposition, now that they have the benefit of Mr Varoufakis.

[Greg Hands]

The IMF has been clear in its endorsement of the charter for budget responsibility:

“The transparency of the new rule—with a focus on headline balances and a simple and well-defined escape clause in the event of very low growth—is welcome.”

It goes on to commend us on having the “appropriate level of flexibility” in the charter. In respect of any external advisers that are taken on by the Labour party, it would appear from The Sun this morning that Labour MPs are extremely unhappy—

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

We changed the rules last year to ensure that when the Government buy from the private sector, payments must be made within 30 days—and that cascades all the way down the supply chain. I can also report that we have hit our target for a quarter of all Government procurement to go to small businesses, and we now want to increase that target from a quarter to a third.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

T3. What plans does the Minister have to ensure that groups who are under-represented on the electoral roll register to vote?

[Mr Letwin]

We are fully committed to bringing more under-represented groups into electoral participation. That is why we are working with Operation Black Vote and other such groups to bring people in from the black and minority ethnic communities. I also draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the very interesting experiment being tried at Sheffield University to nudge the student population to sign up for an automatic registration system. We are looking very carefully at that.

The Economy

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

At a time when we are seeking to grow the economy, it seems bizarre to do so by reducing aggregate demand within a local area, which could in many respects bring about a localised recession.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has just agreed with the argument made by the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), so does he not accept that the same argument could be deployed for never cutting the deficit under any circumstances ever?

[John McDonnell]

The whole point of this debate is about political choices. To be frank, we have said to the Chancellor on a cross-party basis in debate after debate that this was the wrong political choice and that he should therefore look elsewhere. I am not asking for the detail of how he is resolving it—we will wait to hear that next week—but I am urging Ministers at least to give us the assurance that nobody will lose out. Families want that assurance now, because of the insecurity that they face.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

Of course we welcome any increase in employment or reduction in unemployment. The problem is that the economy is unsustainable because it is based on rising house prices, borrowing and debt. My fear is that the jobs that have been gained in the past year may be lost in the forthcoming crisis, if we do not take avoidance action.

Andrew Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank of England, has warned that the third wave of the financial crisis, which is breaking out in the emerging markets, centred on China, could have an impact on Britain. Why? Because Britain is the country with the largest exposure to Chinese debt, at $500 billion. Any upset in the rest of the world will, thanks to our extraordinarily large financial system, rapidly make its way here. That is exactly how the last crisis happened, when failures to repay mis-sold mortgages by some people in American society turned into the failure of the entire banking system in this country.

We cannot know what will happen over the next few years. The Chancellor has warned repeatedly of trouble ahead, but surely these challenges are better faced if we have a more balanced and resilient economy that provides real security for all of us. Instead, we have a single-minded fixation on a single target: the 2020 surplus, which no credible economist supports. By clinging on to that so tenaciously, it appears that the Chancellor is putting the needs of his political career ahead of the prosperity of the country.

[Jeremy Quin]

The hon. Gentleman refers to the balance of trade. Part of the impact of that is that our country has been growing. Dividends have gone up 30%. Those who are investing in the UK are taking more money out of the UK because it is growing. We could be investing in places such as China, which are growing faster. Would he ban investment in China? Is that what he is saying? Should that be the result of his concerns?

[John McDonnell]

Part of the problem is that growth has not been high enough. In addition, we have sold off so many of our assets that money is pumping out of this country, rather than being invested in it. We are not making home-grown investments in our own economy, so the money is flowing abroad. That is causing our balance of payments deficit. In addition, our trade, particularly in manufacturing, has unfortunately not picked up on the scale it should have done.

Let me press on, because a large number of Members want to speak. We know, from the drip-feed of announcements, that the Chancellor intends to make swingeing and potentially devastating cuts to Government Departments and welfare spending. Let me make it clear that austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity. The record of this Government shows that the Chancellor’s political choices are having a devastating impact on people across the United Kingdom. In many cases, his cuts are falling on the heads of those who are least able to afford them. [Interruption.] The Exchequer Secretary is asking for examples, so let us look at local government.

Since 2010, councils have dealt with a 40% real-terms cut in their core Government grant. In adult social care alone, funding reductions and demographic pressures have resulted in a £5 billion funding gap. Where are the cuts falling? According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the 10 most deprived local authority areas have lost £782 per household, while the 10 wealthiest areas have lost just £48 per household. Choices have consequences for people’s incomes and lives and the services upon which they rely. As a consequence of the Chancellor’s choices, ordinary people are being left worse off. He has made those choices and still failed to meet his self-imposed fiscal targets, so I pose this question: are the choices that are being made right, moral and fair? If the answer to any of these questions is no, it is self-evident he needs to rethink, and rethink fast.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I start by agreeing with what the shadow Chancellor said in opening his remarks—that cost should be no obstacle to providing the necessary security and intelligence to protect the people from the kind of threats that we are now seeing and that we saw in Paris. I therefore say to the Economic Secretary that if the Government wish to increase spending in those areas, there will certainly be no resistance from the SNP. I agreed with her, too, when she said that we need to cut out unnecessary and wasteful spending. I think that is absolutely right, and no one with any common sense would say that we should spend money on things that we do not need. So we will offer up a starter for 10, which is £167 billion on Trident and its replacement.

We will back the Opposition motion today. There is no doubt at all that this Tory Government and their coalition predecessor have failed, and we have seen the evidence of that failure, which I shall come on to develop. We essentially have an austerity programme from an austerity Government who have failed to deliver the growth the economy needs and are instead committed to making precisely the same mistakes all over again.

When I say that this Government have failed, we should remember precisely what the Chancellor promised when he became Chancellor in 2010. He said that debt would begin to fall as a share of GDP by 2014-15; that the current account would be in balance this year; and that public sector net borrowing would be £20 billion. We know now—many of us warned of it in the last Parliament—that debt did not fall as a share of GDP as planned; that the current account will not be back in the black until 2017-18 at the earliest; and that public sector net borrowing is not the £20 billion promised, but over three times that, at £70 billion. The key point is that the Chancellor failed to meet every single one of the targets he set for himself. In the eyes of any reasonable man or woman in the street, that is failure.

[Jeremy Quin]

The man in the street and the woman in the street have already spoken; they spoke five months ago, and they want more of the same. They want the deficit to continue to be brought down. We have halved the deficit and done so while maintaining one of the best levels of growth of any country in the G7.

[Stewart Hosie]

Growth was strangled throughout the early part of the recovery in the last Parliament. If it has picked up since, that might say more about the weakness of our major competitors than any inherent goodness or sense in the Tory plan, which, as I say, has actually failed. This is an austerity programme that saw £121 billion-worth of cuts, tax rises and discretionary consolidation in the last Parliament that strangled the recovery. With an extra £37 billion to come, we are now on track for a full decade of austerity.

It is worse than that, however. With the Government changing the ratio of tax rises to cuts from 4:1 to 9:1 during the last Parliament, we have the clearest indication not simply of failure, but of failure delivered by trying to balance the books in a way that was never going to succeed and on the backs of the poor. That is a situation that will only get worse, as the motion mentions, through changes to tax credits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Let me begin by responding to what was said about the deficit by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk). We should judge the Conservatives by their own record. In 2010, the Chancellor said that he would get rid of the deficit in one term; that target rapidly disappeared. He then said that he would halve the deficit in one term, a plan that was clearly shown to have failed when it was down by only a third at the time of the election. He then moved the target to 2019, and then to 2020. When it suits him, the Chancellor changes his mind and his measure as much as he can on the deficit, so it is clearly not as important as Conservative Members claim.

[Jeremy Quin]

Surely the hon. Gentleman welcomes the flexibility shown by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. After all, Opposition Members are always asking him to show flexibility. He makes certain that he stays on course and we get to the right place. The deficit has been halved to date, and that will continue, but it is happening in a measured and effective way.

[Bill Esterson]

Of course we need to get rid of the deficit so that we can start reducing the debt, but it must be done in a way that is sustainable, and that can only happen if we grow the economy.

The Government have presided over the slowest recovery on record. Tax receipts are an indicator of the health and productivity—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

The Chancellor is known for being a very political operator. Economic historians will pay tribute to the manner in which, following the 2010 election, he successfully framed the economic debate by focusing on the deficit. This enabled the Conservative party to challenge the economic competence of its predecessors while also allowing it the political space to pursue its ideological obsession with reducing the size of the state. The Chancellor has endeavoured to portray the economic recovery as one made in No. 11 Downing street. This ignores the fact that the last recession was the longest in economic history and was most certainly exacerbated by the deep contraction in public spending at the beginning of the last Parliament.

What is often conveniently ignored in debates such as this is the role of monetary policy. As I have said in the past, the UK economy continues to be on the life support of ultra-loose monetary policy. Central bank interest rates continue to be at an historically low level of 0.5% and the economy has been kept afloat with £375 billion-worth of quantitative easing. One of the perverse side-effects of QE has been to increase wealth inequalities as assets increase in value, a theme I will return to later. Monetary policy by the central bank filled the void left by the Treasury’s fiscal cuts, but it has led to a greater imbalance in the UK economy, where economic performance is now even more reliant on consumer spending, as opposed to public investment, exports and business investment. According to the House of Commons Library, household consumption now accounts for over 60% of the UK economy, and it should be an urgent Treasury priority to rebalance and boost business investment and exports.

The Bank for International Settlements—or, to give it its other name, the central bank of central banks—has warned that the danger with the current ultra-loose monetary policy is that the western economies will become hooked on low interest rates and that any normalisation will lead to significant economic headwinds. In other words, there is a danger that the abnormal in monetary policy will become the new norm. The obvious consequence, if there is no normalisation of monetary policy, is that the central bank will be impotent when the next downturn comes. Let us remember that, since the second world war, the average economic cycle has lasted between seven and 10 years, which means that we might be due another downturn very soon.

[Jeremy Quin]

I am not certain what the hon. Gentleman is asking for. Is he suggesting that we should be hiking interest rates now? No one likes the extent of unconventional monetary policy, but hiking interest rates would come as a shock to many.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because I was about to make the point that the Treasury needs to be very careful with our fiscal policy.

A study by Credit Suisse shows that since the turn of the century the UK has been alone among the G7 members in seeing its wealth inequality grow. Even the International Monetary Fund argues that reducing wealth inequalities is a key economic growth strategy. Unfortunately, the recent Budget, with its assault on tax credits, is likely to lead to an increase in income inequalities and wealth inequalities. Considering the pressure faced by the public finances and the cuts being imposed on support for the poorest in society, we oppose the intention to end inheritance tax on family homes worth up to £1 million. Inheritance tax raised more than £4 billion in 2015-16 and it should be an important element of a more balanced approach to fiscal consolidation, as opposed to the Tory obsession with cuts. The decision to scrap maintenance grants for the poorest students at the same time as introducing the regressive changes to inheritance tax will not solve the major social mobility problems in the UK.

The Chancellor has eased what the Office for Budget Responsibility had described as a “rollercoaster” fiscal policy, whereby cuts would be front-loaded, with a spending splurge at the end of the political cycle. However, spending on public services by the end of this Parliament as a percentage of GDP will be at its lowest level since 1964-65, according to the OBR.

The economy faces several major challenges. The first involves the grotesque geographical wealth inequalities within the British state and the over-reliance on London and the south-east of England. This problem has built up under successive Governments, to the degree that the UK is now by far the most unequal state in the European Union. Regrettably, the communities I represent are at the bottom of the pile. To be fair, the current UK Government at least acknowledge that there is an issue. Their response has been to devolve significant taxation powers to Northern Ireland and Scotland, which have received powers over corporation tax and full income tax powers respectively. Significant powers are also being devolved to English city regions.

In the case of Wales, however, we are getting minor taxes and an income tax sharing arrangement pending a referendum many years down the line. The key question that the UK Government need to answer is this: what economic disadvantage do they envisage Wales facing as a result of our second-class settlement? Direct economic control from Westminster is clearly failing my country. We deserve equal respect with the other constituent parts of the UK and we need the same job creation levers that are being devolved elsewhere.

Secondly, the UK faces major challenges in relation to chronic levels of business investment and productivity. The Treasury Budget briefing note itself acknowledges that business investment levels in the UK are the worst of all major economies apart from Italy. To address this, the Treasury needs to return infrastructure investment to pre-recession levels, as advocated by the IMF. That would equate to around an extra 1% of GDP—£19 billion of extra investment across the UK with a share for Wales of around £1 billion. That is what we will be looking for when the Chancellor stands up next week to deliver his comprehensive spending review in his autumn statement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). He referred at the outset to the growth that we are currently achieving and I take his comments about that. The Office for Budget Responsibility suggests that we will have growth higher than 2.4% for each year in this Parliament. As has been said by many hon. Members, that puts us in the best cohort among all those in the G7. It is not a jobless recovery. We have 2 million more people in employment—that is, 1,000 extra per day. As the Minister said from the Dispatch Box, finally average wages are increasing in real terms, a trend that is extended by the national living wage introduced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.

That is a remarkable performance for any Government, but it is particularly remarkable in the context of what we inherited back in 2010. Here I respectfully draw a distinction between myself and the remarks of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). We can all remember wise people saying back in 2010 that if anybody came in to take the actions required to sort out our economy, they would be out in opposition for a generation; that if people came in to tackle the problems that our country faced back in 2010—the legacy that we were taking on—that would be politically impossible. Those wise people underestimated the British people and the Government. They did not underestimate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, whose comments suggested that austerity was a political choice to sort out the deficit. It was not a political choice; at the time it was economic necessity.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

I have heard from the hon. Gentleman and many others on the Government Benches today about the hundreds of thousands of new jobs, the increase in wages, and this road that leads to economic prosperity. Can he answer one simple question? Why is it, then, that under this Government half a million more children have been pushed into absolute poverty?

[Jeremy Quin]

In relative terms, there are fewer children in poverty than ever before, and I am delighted that half a million children have adults in their families who are working. That is the route to success and long-term prosperity.

I take issue with the suggestion made by the hon. Members for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) and for Hayes and Harlington that our fiscal problems resulted solely from the recession. It is easy to forget the golden legacy bequeathed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). When the Labour party came into government, it had the third best structural position of any country in the OECD. When it left government—in fact, before that, on the eve of the financial crisis—it had the fourth worst. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington cited Gordon Brown. I have no confidence that the same sort of pattern would not emerge if Labour Members were ever again to grace the Treasury Bench. Despite the huge work being done and the pressure that is being exerted by the Government, we are still increasing our deficit by £3,300 a year per household, and still spending £1 billion a week to service that debt. That is why we need a Government who are going to continue to get this under control.

The motion before the House is very long—I counted nearly 300 words—but it does not seem to contain any ideas as to how we should be cutting the deficit. It does, though, contain a couple of aspects that I would like to mention, one of which was referred to by the hon. Member for East Antrim: spend on research and development. It is a pleasure to be able to remind the House that with 1% of the world’s population, we are responsible for 3% of R and D spend and 16% of the most important research; he was absolutely right about that. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) mentioned the report by the Royal Society, and the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) raised the old bugbear of the inability to get our universities and our businesses working together. We seem to be getting on top of that. We are supposedly now fourth best in the world at getting that linkage, as well as being the second-best economy in the world in terms of global innovation. I welcome what the Government are doing through the global challenge fund in preserving the capital budget for R and D spending at, for example, the International Centre for Advanced Materials in Manchester.

[James Cartlidge]

Ultimately, my hon. Friend is talking about the importance of investment. It is necessary to reduce the deficit, and therefore eventually the long-term debt, in order to build an economic policy that is credible to outside investors and gives them the confidence to invest in this country. That is the key reason.

[Jeremy Quin]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. He is not the only wise person to make such remarks; the head of the CBI did so only recently. That fiscal rule gives companies the confidence they need that they can invest in this country and will continue to see long-term progress being delivered by this country.

The hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) talked about the need to have export-led growth. One of the problems we have with our balance of trade—I mentioned it in an intervention on the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington—is that we are growing while our major markets are shrinking or teetering on the edge of recession. That is the sad aspect of the position we are in. While I am delighted that we have one of the best rates of growth of any country in the G7, it would be a lot easier if the whole of Europe were growing at the same pace. Whereas other countries are taking strong dividends out of this country from the investments they have made—dividends have gone up by 30% in the UK economy since 2010—we are not getting the same capital returns from the investments that we are making overseas. Nor are they in a position to buy the goods that we are manufacturing. There are many good stories to be told about our export business, particularly in the automotive sector, but if our customers cannot afford to buy our goods, that will inevitably come through in the statistics.

The answer is that we should be investing more and expending more effort on the growth markets of the world. I have to say to the hon. Member for Dundee East, and to other hon. Members, that we see the growth in China and in India, and we know how important they are. One would have needed the sleeping prowess of a Rip Van Winkle not to have noticed the efforts that the Government are making in India and in China to ensure that we are opening up those markets for our exports in future. I oppose the motion.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Royal Bank of Scotland

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osamor]

May I make some progress?

Martin Taylor, a member of the Bank of England’s federal policy committee, said:

“I would like to have a feeling that the Government recognises there are policy options and is thinking along those lines rather than saying our job is to get the business back into the private sector.”

Unfortunately, the rushed nature of the sale, the lack of evidence provided to support it and the lack of discussion surrounding it suggests that the contrary is the case.

The Government’s decision to sell off RBS shares in the summer without any published evidence that they have considered alternative options raises important questions about public accountability and process. It signals a return to business as usual and an unquestioning faith that the private sector is the right direction for British banking.

The Chancellor argued that it was the

“right thing to do for the taxpayer and for British businesses”

and that the sale

“would promote financial stability, lead to a more competitive banking sector, and support the interests of the wider economy.”

To support those claims, the Government have relied on a 13-page report by the investment bank, Rothschild, and a two-page letter from the Governor of the Bank of England. Neither of those presents any concrete evidence to support the Chancellor’s assertion. Opposition to the sale has been voiced by the public, hon. Members and independent voices in the field. Nearly 120,000 people have signed a petition calling for an independent review of the options for the bank’s future before any shares are sold.

A survey commissioned by Move Your Money shows that only 21% of people agree with the current conditions of the share sale; 82% agree that RBS should act in the public interest and 67% agree that we should have a full independent review. Many alternative options have been put forward for RBS, including breaking it up into a series of challenger banks, turning it into a state investment bank and converting it into a network of local or regional banks.

I want to focus on the last of those options, which has been advocated by, among others, the New Economics Foundation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Civitas, Respublica and the former Treasury Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey). It is modelled not on an untested economic theory but on the German Sparkassen, a network of local public savings banks owned in trust for the public benefit, accountable to local people and with a mandate to support their local economies. The Sparkassen are the powerhouse of small business lending in Germany and are an important part of the success story of the German economy.

The NEF has proposed that RBS could be broken into 130 local banks based on local authority areas, of a similar size to the Sparkassen. They would be carved out of the bank’s high street operations, with its investment banking and private banking arms being sold. Like the Sparkassen, they would be able to share risks and resources to achieve economies of scale but, crucially, each local bank would be independent. By refusing to consider this option, the Government are missing a golden opportunity to fix the structural problems of UK banking that were exposed in the crisis.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I hope that the hon. Lady would accept that the German banking system also had its problems during the financial crisis. The Sparkassen to which she refers were often lending very inappropriately, which helped to pump up the credit bubble, and they were investing in southern Europe in a way that helped to cause the eurozone crisis.

[Kate Osamor]

The hon. Gentleman’s example covers what happened in a short period of time. Over a long period, the system has been tested and has worked, so I beg to disagree.

The UK has the most concentrated and homogenous banking sector in the developed world. Just 3% of our banking system is locally controlled, compared with two thirds of that in Germany. We are also uniquely reliant on shareholder-owned banks at the expense of other ownership models. This lack of diversity makes us uniquely vulnerable to financial crises. To put it simply, it makes it more likely that our banks will all suffer the same problems at the same time, as they did in 2008.

Breaking up RBS and localising our banking system would make us more resilient to future shocks. Local banks also provide a means through which we can rebalance the economy, as the UK has the most regionally unbalanced economy of any European country. Studies find that local banks in other countries help prevent capital from being sucked into big cities, and spread jobs and lending more evenly across the country. This change would also ensure that more people had access to bank branches. Whereas commercial banks are shutting at an increasingly rapid rate across the country and in Europe, local banks in Europe have prioritised maintaining good access for their customers.

Local French co-operatives, for example, typically locate between 25% and 33% of their branches in sparsely populated areas. Local banks also lend more to the real economy, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises. That would greatly benefit my constituency of Edmonton and those across the country who struggle to obtain loans. That is made possible not just by the banks’ local focus but by their ownership structure and public interest mandate. Across Europe, banks run for more than profit devote 66% of their balance sheets to high street banking, compared with just 37% for commercial banks, which tend to lend for more profitable activities, such as derivatives trading. Local banks could therefore reduce our vulnerability to crisis, help rebalance the economy and boost the real economy. Analysis from the NEF suggests that that should have been done in 2008, as UK GDP could have benefited from an immediate boost of £7.1 billion, with an additional £30.5 billion over three years. Reforming RBS is in the interests of the taxpayer and the economy.

I want to end with a statement from the Tomlinson report, which highlights how selling off RBS shares represents a wasted opportunity for significant publicly beneficial reform in UK banking:

“Returning RBS and Lloyds to full private sector ownership in their current form would be a return to the banking landscape of 2003, possibly with even less competition…Given the lack of any real change in the banking sector, there is nothing that will stop 2018 being the same as 2008 unless radical action is taken now.”

Without reform of any banking structures, there is a risk we could witness another crash.

We must learn from the events of 2008. By failing to provide evidence justifying the sale and to consider alternative options, the Government are putting ideology above what is best for the economy and the taxpayer. I ask the Government to conduct an independent review of all the alternative options and urge Members on both sides of the House to support the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on introducing this important debate and thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for it. My take on the motion is fairly simple: what is there not to like? It suggests that the Government should

“consider suspending the further sale of its shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland”

and calls for

“a wider review of the UK’s financial sector”,

including

“the case for establishing new models of banking, including regional banks.”

That suggests a mixed economy in the banking sector that does not simply result in a massive loss to the taxpayer—some suggest as big a hit to the public purse as £14 billion.

That does not seem to me to be an especially political suggestion. Indeed, organisations on the right of the political spectrum such as Civitas and ResPublica have suggested turning RBS into a network of local banks, and regulators such as Adam Posen and Martin Taylor have also suggested turning it into smaller challenger banks. The motion therefore appears sensible and not particularly political, so I find talk of abstention quite strange.

In my brief contribution I want to make a few points about the question of alternative ownership models. As far as I can see—my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton pointed this out—there appears to be a distinct lack of evidence for the Government’s assertion that banks perform better when located solely within the private sector. I want to point out evidence suggesting that other ownership models—what we might term “stakeholder banks”—should have a role to play in fixing our broken banking system.

My basic departure point is this: as far as I can see, in justifying their policy on RBS, the Government have leaned heavily on a two-page letter from the Governor of the Bank of England, which states that

“all the evidence suggests that commercial organisations are more efficient, more innovative and more effective”

in the private sector, and that a privately owned banking system is

“best able to allocate capital efficiently and competitively to grow jobs, investment, and income”.

That is pretty clear and unequivocal, so let us start with some basic questions.

Where is the evidence for those assertions? Neither the Government, nor the Bank has provided any. When questioned, the Minister has simply pointed back to the Governor’s letter, which appears to be a pretty lazy feedback loop. It is not really good enough when we are talking about the future of a major national asset, one of the UK’s biggest banks, with huge implications for our economy and the resilience of our financial system, and indeed our livelihoods and those of our constituents.

Were we to listen only to the Government, we would think that there is simply no alternative to an economy dominated by large, privately owned banks, except perhaps some kind of monolithic Government bureaucracy—a simple either/or choice between a big shareholder bank and a big state bank. However, there is a whole range of other ownership models that work in other countries, from local savings banks accountable to local communities, such as the German Sparkassen, to co-operatives, mutuals and state investment banks.

Actually, as far as I can see, it is the UK that is the odd one out, because it relies exclusively on shareholder-owned banks. For example, research by the New Economics Foundation has found that nearly two thirds of German bank deposits are with so-called “stakeholder banks”. In France the proportion is about 50%, and in the Netherlands it is around 40%. In the UK it is just over 10%, the lowest of almost any developed economy.

[Jeremy Quin]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that building societies also suffered from problems through the crash? We had our own equivalents in this country, and I am afraid that they fared no better than some of our major banks.

[Jon Cruddas]

I will come to the question of demutualisation in a moment. I simply suggest that Government Members read a book called “The New Few” by Ferdinand Mount, who happened to be Margaret Thatcher’s head of policy. He argued for a more resilient capitalism, including a mixed economy in banking provision, with mutuals, local regional banks and a wider distribution of banking products for communities such as mine in east London. Therefore, I do not think that this is necessarily a left-right debate. I argue that this is a live debate on the right, which suggests that simple neutrality or abstention on the motion is not necessarily going with the grain of more innovative thinking across the right of the political spectrum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jon Cruddas]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, so let us talk about stakeholder banks and look at some of the evidence. I refer colleagues to the NEF document “Reforming RBS” and some of its findings. First, stakeholder banks tended to be better capitalised and less volatile before the crisis, and they were less exposed to the risky and speculative activities that caused it. Co-operative banks suffered just 8% of the total losses incurred during the banking crisis, despite accounting for around a fifth of the European banking market. To put that in context, HSBC alone was responsible for 10% of those losses. Secondly, stakeholder banks were also more likely to keep lending after the crisis. In fact, German public savings banks, Swiss cantonal banks and credit unions in the US and Canada all kept expanding their lending to businesses right through the crisis and the resulting recession.

[Jeremy Quin]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that our own experience with the Co-operative bank has not been that happy?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

The number of compliments paid to Royal Bank of Scotland over the past few years has not been such to overtax the Hansard reporters, and I have no doubt that today’s debate will be no different. I have huge sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg) and the experience of his constituent. We will all have constituents with similar issues—I certainly do—and it is absolutely right that these things should be focused on and that the lessons from the mistakes must be learned. I am trying to take up the challenge of the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) by presenting an alternative viewpoint in addressing the subject of the debate that I congratulate the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing.

As the Register of Members’ Financial Interests points out, I have had some familiarity with this sector. I therefore think it is appropriate that we at least acknowledge the huge transformation that has happened inside RBS over the past few years. With the encouragement of United Kingdom Financial Investments Ltd and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, it has taken serious actions. It has dramatically shrunk its investment bank, and that will be welcomed in many parts of this House. It has sold off its overseas assets, getting rid of Citizens Financial Group in the US, and it is sorting out the mismanagement of the past. It is investing in IT systems finally to bring together the amalgamation of all the banks that form the business. With its capital now at 16%, I very much hope that it is now in the position that we all want to see whereby it can really drive lending into the UK economy and support our small and medium-sized enterprises.

[Grahame M. Morris]

The hon. Gentleman is setting out an alternative view that RBS has changed and been reformed, but did not the LIBOR exchange rate-rigging scandal happen after it became a publicly owned bank? Has anything fundamentally changed in the bonus culture that drives such risk-taking and does not support jobs in the real economy?

[Jeremy Quin]

I acknowledge and appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point. I would have a much better case if I could say that all the problems were pre-crisis, but they were not; I fully acknowledge that. There are clearly issues that were endemic in RBS’s culture, and I sincerely hope that it has got a grip on that now.

RBS certainly does have a grip on its corporate structure and how it is conducting its business. It is now far more focused back on the UK and on UK corporate lending. It is the largest single lender to UK corporates, the largest supporter of SMEs, and the largest provider of mortgage lending. That is what we all want to see and wanted to see when the stake was initially taken.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is saying that RBS has changed and improved its culture, but in The Times this week there was an article suggesting that it has been falsifying the mis-selling data that it has been giving out. I wonder what has actually changed if it is still misbehaving and, in effect, telling these porkies. Surely, in that case, it has not reformed itself and is just the same as it always has been.

[Jeremy Quin]

I have a lot of faith in the regulatory system that Ministers have put in place over the past five or six years under the coalition Government and this Government. What we need to focus on, as a House, is ensuring that we have the regulatory system that will deliver the results for our constituents and for the broader UK economy. I am nervous that the motion proposed by the hon. Member for Edmonton, although well intentioned, would delay support going into the economy.

I was serving in the Treasury when the stake in RBS was originally taken. I know that no hon. Member would be under any illusion that that stake was ever taken in a leisurely manner with a view to getting a tidy investment. The decision was taken by Labour with the very best of intentions, and it was the right decision to support the UK economy and the UK banking system at an absolutely critical moment.

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

Given the hon. Gentleman’s experience at the time, does he agree that there is still nevertheless an onus on the Treasury to ensure that the money paid out in acquiring RBS is paid back in full to the taxpayer?

[Jeremy Quin]

I understand the attraction of that argument. The hon. Gentleman is an economist of fine standing, and his point, which was also made by the hon. Member for Edmonton, is one to which we would all like the answer yes, but it is not as simple as that. The reality is that the value of a share is what people are prepared to pay for it. We know what the value of RBS is at present. A lot of actions were taken within RBS that might have been right for the UK economy but not have added to the value of the share price. If we are expecting RBS to act in the interests of the UK, that may not always be right for their share price.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jeremy Quin]

I will, but let me make one final point in rebutting the point made by hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan), and then I am sure the hon. Gentleman will have another go. The Rothschild report is thorough—it is bigger than the two pages produced by the Governor of the Bank of England—and sets out why the taxpayer can expect to at the very least break even and probably make an overall profit on their investment in the banking system. That is a remarkable achievement, given that back in 2009, when the Labour party was in government, the Treasury was talking about a £20 billion to £50 billion loss.

[George Kerevan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for letting me back in. I simply asked him whether he felt, given his experience, that the goal should be to try to maximise the return to the taxpayer, given what they put in. I accept they might not get it all back, but should not the goal be to maximise the return to the shareholder, who is the taxpayer?

[Jeremy Quin]

Of course, we must maximise the returns, but we must do so in the context of the broader picture for the UK. I acknowledge that the banking system is incredibly important to our economy, including what it can provide to the real economy.

[Mr Baker]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jeremy Quin]

I will give way briefly to my hon. Friend, but I know that other Members want to speak.

[Mr Baker]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. Having listened to the debate, one of my advisers has texted me to say that according to the International Monetary Fund, as retrospectively analysed by Ewald Engelen et al, the taxpayer cost of saving the banking system was £500 billion, which is way more than the equity injected into it. Has my hon. Friend taken into account the IMF’s calculations, and does he think we will get that £500 billion?

[Jeremy Quin]

I am grateful for the wisdom and insight that has flashed on to my hon. Friend’s machine. His staff are very attentive and I look forward to them providing me with the IMF report so that I can go through it in great detail. I look forward to discussing it with him later. I am being intervened on from all sides. My hon. Friend makes me take on board the £500 billion mentioned by the IMF, while the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) simply wants us to hit the five pounds tuppence per share. I am being pulled in different directions, but we all agree that RBS needs to be productive for the real economy.

That takes me to the heart of the motion tabled by the hon. Member for Edmonton. The long-delayed and long-drawn-out splitting off of Williams & Glyn from RBS has cost billions and taken a huge amount of management time. With the best will in the world, splitting up such organisations takes time, effort and money. I am really concerned that it could be an unnecessary distraction to try to pull a bank in as many as 130 different directions, as the hon. Lady proposes. I fear that the creation of multiple banks will lead to multiple dis-synergies and create entities that will find it much harder to access capital markets. It could be a very costly distraction and I am very nervous that it would not act in the interests of the broader economy. There are advantages that flow from a large, well-capitalised and well-regulated bank being able to spread its assets across the UK.

Although I wish the initial public offering of the Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank well, if it goes ahead in the new year, I fear that investors prefer the spread of banks across asset classes and across the whole of the UK, rather than regional entities. One only needs to remember the passion in this place regarding the steel industry to recognise how a major problem can have a ripple effect on small and medium-sized enterprises locally and cause huge problems for a regional economy. I fear that capital markets would reflect those risks in a higher cost of capital and scarce resources, particularly in those very areas of the country where we all wish to see the maximum amount of lending.

[Catherine West]

It think we could be convinced if the number of loans being given to small businesses since 2008 had rocketed. Instead it is flat because, quite rightly, the banking sector is looking inwards, although that is not to be encouraged. What incentive can Government policy create to make banks lend to the small businesses that keep our constituencies going?

[Jeremy Quin]

I will make a negative point and a positive point. On the negative side, I do not think that tackles my concern that smaller banks would have higher costs of capital and scarcer resources, making them less able to lend to smaller businesses. I think the hon. Lady would agree—my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove certainly would—that there is still a huge crisis in confidence in the major banks, and the last thing a lot of small businesses want to do is ask for a loan, because they are worried about the rug being pulled from underneath them. That process is going to take years to address.

Internationally, I do not think that the United States, given its overall funding strategies and the use of capital markets by corporates, presents Europe with a useful analogy. The caja banks in Spain were regionally focused and regionally driven, and they made huge investments in regional projects, but they have been a disaster and brought the Spanish economy crashing down. I acknowledge the historical success of Sparkassen and Landesbanken in Germany, but I fear that what happened to them during the crisis could happen elsewhere. The inability of Landesbanken to get local lending projects that more than met its cost of capital meant that it ended up taking on very risky investments in Europe, which helped to precipitate the Eurozone crisis

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

And bonds.

[Jeremy Quin]

As the hon. Gentleman says, the wrong kinds of bonds in the wrong kinds of markets also inflated the credit bubble.

I fear that there are no overseas alternatives that would act as a panacea. There is no reason why we should not do something by ourselves, but I am worried that it would be a distraction at a time when we really want money to be flowing out of banks and into the real economy. For that reason, no matter how lonely it makes me, I oppose the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baker]

I banged on in the last Parliament about the IFRS and their shortcomings. Indeed, I introduced a Bill to require parallel accounts to use the UK generally accepted accounting principles, precisely because I think there is a serious problem. I refer the House to Gordon Kerr’s book “The Law of Opposites”, published by the Adam Smith Institute, which not only covers this problem in detail, but explains how it feeds into the problem of derivatives being used specifically to manufacture capital out of thin air to circumvent regulatory capital rules. That is an extremely serious problem that might mean that the entire banking system is in a far worse place than we might otherwise think.

[Jeremy Quin]

I am genuinely curious about what my hon. Friend is saying. A lot of work was done on the balance sheet of RBS at the time of the asset protection scheme. Does he not think that any accounting issues would have been picked up at that stage?

[Mr Baker]

As I said earlier, we compared the asset protection scheme’s accounts with those of RBS and found a £20 billion difference in capital. When I write to my hon. Friend with the details from the IMF, I will introduce him to the people who did that work. I would be glad to sit down with him and my advisers and see what he thinks, because I recognise and respect his vast experience. I am, of course, only a humble engineer who sat in banks asking people how the system worked and found that they often could not tell me.

These concerns are not ones that I have made up. I have in my hand a letter from the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum that explains to our commissioner at the European Union in considerable detail over eight pages what is wrong with the IFRS. I would be pleased to share that with Members who are interested.

I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea that we understand the true and fair position of RBS, or indeed any other banks, because of the imposition of the IFRS. Particularly in relation to RBS, that has meaningful consequences when it comes to thinking about selling the shares. There are also consequences that we should consider when any consideration is given to paying out dividends.

Secondly, I want to raise Professor Kevin Dowd’s extended criticisms of the stress tests. He has made the point to me that under the 2014 stress tests, RBS had a projected post-stress, post-management action ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets of 5.2%. That was sufficiently poor that the bank was required to take further action on its capital position. Of course, it now wants to hand out dividends. That seems to both of us to make no sense. He continued:

“This 5.2% ratio compares to the 4.5% hurdle the Bank used, which is actually less than the 7% imposed on UK banks last year, and much less than the 8.5% to 11% minimum that will be imposed when Basel III is fully implemented in 2019.”

The range arises because of the counter-cyclical capital buffer. That is rather bizarre because it appears that RBS did not meet the Bank of England’s minimum requirements in the stress tests.

I am afraid that it gets worse. Because market events do not follow a normal distribution, there are severe problems with the risk-weighted assets measure that perhaps even render it useless. Therefore, the only measure that really makes sense is the leverage ratio, which is the ratio of capital to total assets, with none of the risk weighting. Under Basel last year, the absolute minimum leverage ratio was 3% and the Bank of England expected UK banks to meet that minimum. That 3% minimum was low. Some of my advisers suggest that a minimum of 15% is necessary, and possibly even double that for the bigger banks. That would be a radical departure. What did RBS achieve under the stress tests? It achieved 2.3%.

I am grateful for the work of Kevin Dowd, Gordon Kerr and John Butler at Cobden Partners on the IFRS and the stress tests. The problems that they have put in front of us are potentially extremely severe. I encourage the Government to meet my colleagues, to look at this matter again in great detail and to understand what has happened with this accounting, so that they can see what it means for our ability to see the true position of banks and how it incentivises structures that we subsequently find, as was pointed out earlier, are of no social value—structures that often serve to deceive and to create an impression of capital where there is none.

It is highly unlikely that RBS is in the state it appears to be in, and I agree with those who have called for diversity in ownership models. The challenges of providing those diverse banks out of RBS in its current condition are probably insurmountable, and I would welcome Government policy action to encourage mutuals and co-operatives. Above all, I encourage the Government to take all possible steps to establish the true position of RBS and the entire banking system, by comprehensively investigating the flaws in IFRS that have been well set out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Blackford]

I thank my hon. Friend.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) for securing this important debate, and I commend the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) who provided the House with great detail about how he views the financial issues surrounding the Royal Bank of Scotland.

We keep hearing from the Government about their long-term economic plan, but to have any kind of effective economic plan we need a dynamic banking sector that is fit for purpose and engages in appropriate and responsible consumer and business lending. It is therefore important that we pay cognisance to what is happening to the money supply, and in particular the definition of broad money or M4.

Figures released by the Bank of England for the year to end September 2015 are a cause of some concern. Money supply fell by 0.6%, although I concede that that was largely a result of a fall in wholesale deposits. Worryingly, however, lending fell by 0.1%. There is concern that availability to bank lending for businesses and consumers is running below the rate that can be considered sustainable, and certainly below the level that is consistent with the delivery of sustainable economic growth.

There is also a legitimate debate about what kind of lending we should have, and about interaction with savers—many speakers have already raised that point. We must encourage industrial and commercial investment that focuses on innovation and skills, driving up wages and living standards, and we must have less focus on consumer debt. In Scotland, Scottish Enterprise has a limited but successful investment bank, and we must consider how to support and grow that model elsewhere in the UK.

[Jeremy Quin]

rose—

[Ian Blackford]

I will happily give way to my hon. Friend.

[Jeremy Quin]

I am grateful to be called an hon. Friend by the hon. Gentleman. I accept his point about the types of lending taking place. Does he share my concern that in making many banking decisions, bankers enjoy having an asset that they can grab hold of—a house, perhaps, or something that they can see, touch and feel? We are considering cash-flow projections. Perhaps this issue comes down to the heart of training inside banks, because to be comfortable with some of the new technologies and innovations, they must be able to understand those cash-flow projections exactly.

[Ian Blackford]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman and I could probably bang on about that issue for a considerable time. He is right. Banks that are lending, particularly to the business community, must understand the businesses to which they are lending. Too often that has been done by matrix, spreadsheets and ticking boxes, and not through a clear understanding of where the growth opportunities are in the economy. That must change, which is why I referred to the investment bank in Scottish Enterprise. We need sectoral skills and an understanding of where growth opportunities are in the economy. There must be more of an alignment of the interests of the country, the Government and the banks, and an appreciation of what we need to do to deliver long-term and sustainable growth.

[Ian Blackford]

I confess that I am not aware of the individual rates charged, but the investment bank in Scottish Enterprise is quite constrained by its access to capital. I hate to make this point, but if the Scottish Parliament had more powers, it would increase our ability to ensure that that investment bank was properly funded.

We all understand the importance of improving capital ratios and establishing a more sustainable banking platform, but at the same time there has been a choking-off of credit to businesses and consumers, restraining our ability to grow our economy. The need for quantitative easing was clear, but it is right to ask how wider society has benefited from the Bank of England’s £375 billion asset purchase scheme.

Quantitative easing demonstrably helped the banks, but it has not fed through to greater activity to help the wider economy. If we contrast that with the pre-financial crash period between 2006-8, we see that M4 was increasing at an annual rate of close to 15%—levels that should have made alarm bells ring in the Government and the regulator at that time. Today we are living with the consequences of that failure, and that is why we are having this debate. The issue of banks being too big to fail, and the dislocation that took place in our economy as a result of the financial crisis, meant that the public were, rightly, angry at the behaviour of those responsible. We cannot and must not return to the circumstances that led to that crisis.

Of course, none of this was unprecedented. There was a significant banking crisis in the UK in the 1870s. It took a long time to recover from that crisis, and at the time it led to substantial change. In the US the Glass-Steagall Act was introduced in 1933. It prohibited commercial banks from participating in investment banking after the excesses of the 1920s, and that legislation remained in place until repeal under President Clinton. The Glass-Steagall Act was introduced for good reasons, and in my opinion its repeal added to the toxic cocktail that led to the financial crisis of 2007-08. In that context it is right to debate the relationship between commercial and investment banking, although we seem to have settled on ring-fencing as a solution to the challenges.

I understand why many people have supported ring-fencing, and perhaps it is worthy of ongoing debate. We know, however, that investment banking was not the only source of the financial exuberance that brought our economy to its knees. It is worth remembering that Northern Rock was the first failure in this country. That bank had absolutely no exposure to investment banking, and, as was the case elsewhere, simple bad practice—or indeed malpractice—was the issue. We must ask whether it is necessary or appropriate for our commercial banks, such as Royal Bank of Scotland, to engage in investment banking. There is no question but that we need a thriving investment banking industry in this country, and it remains today a source of jobs and wealth. The critical question, however, is whether such practices are appropriate for our high-street banks.

[Jeremy Quin]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman referred to the Overend and Gurney banking crisis of the 1870s and—this follows on from the remarks by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker)—I believe it was only because of that crisis that banks had to report their accounts at all. Before that, such disclosure was regarded as rather a bad thing for a bank to do, because people might not trust it if it had to state exactly what its assets were.

On the investment banking arm of the Royal Bank of Scotland, does the hon. Gentleman think it appropriate for a commercial bank to provide investment banking capabilities to its corporate clients? There are many legitimate things about investment banking, such as foreign exchange providing support for exports, and derivatives are not always a bad thing—there are things they can do to help the export industry. There may be a synergy there, and I would be interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s remarks.

[Ian Blackford]

I appreciate that there is an issue regarding what can be defined as investment banking. Of course corporate banking clients at RBS would require some of those facilities, but it is a question of how it is done.

On 13 October the headline on the BBC was “Will Barclays make another push into Casino banking?” That is the real issue. We can debate and discuss the frailties that still exist in the Royal Bank of Scotland, and what it needs to do to improve its balance sheet, but when banks are in a better position than they are today and have strengthened balance sheets, what would prevent the likes of RBS—even in a ring-fenced scenario—from putting additional capital into investment banking? That is the problem. Over the past two or three decades the seductive charms of investment banking have led to investment banks going down that road. We must be careful about that and debate the best way we in Parliament can ensure effective regulation. It never worked. It was a fantasy. Sad to say, it could become a fantasy for many more in the years to come. We do not need our high-street banks to become casino banks, and if necessary we will need legislation to enforce that. Lessons must be learned. No more can the country be held to ransom.

I am conscious that others wish to speak, so in the short time I have left let me turn specifically to RBS. I want to see RBS back in private hands, but not at any price. As the motion sets out, there ought to be a wider review of the UK financial sector. We own RBS collectively and we have a duty of stewardship to make sure that it is fit for purpose for the decades to come. There needs to be a debate on this before the Treasury and UKFI unwind our position. We have a duty, having bailed RBS out, to get the best value for the taxpayer. I am delighted to support the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Quin]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept, though, that there have been dramatic changes in the regulatory environment? Happily, we will not be returning to 2003, because of the ring-fencing that has been introduced and the extra capital: RBS now has a capital base of 16%. Have there not been improvements in that respect?

[Clive Lewis]

I think that there have been changes, but as I said earlier, in an intervention, the fact that RBS is back again, and possibly about to be investigated for yet more fraud, does not exactly encourage me to think that those changes have been deep enough.

As I was saying, the sale of RBS was announced not to Parliament, but to a white-tie dinner full of City grandees, in a speech that also promised the City a “new settlement” on financial regulation. We are now starting to see what that “new settlement” looks like, with the Government caving in to economic blackmail from the likes of HSBC, which threatened to move its headquarters unless key post-crisis measures such as the bank levy and the ring fence between retail and investment banking were watered down—that, I think, answers the point made by the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin); with the competition authorities ruling out action to break up big banks, even though they acknowledge that their customers are getting a raw deal; and with rumours that the Chancellor personally arranged the sacking of Martin Wheatley, the head of the Financial Conduct Authority, who has a reputation for being tough on bank misconduct.

Some commentators have even suggested that the Government’s desire for a quick sale of RBS is partly responsible for their magnanimous attitude towards the big banks: that the Government do not want to do anything that could damage the bank’s share price in the short term. If that were true, it would be incredibly short-sighted. We would effectively be trading in the chance to build a genuinely safer banking system in our haste to return to the pre-crisis status quo.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing this debate, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving Members time to discuss this important and topical issue in the Chamber. I am pleased that so many have taken part. It is a real pleasure to join the Minister and to respond on behalf of the Opposition for the first time in the Chamber.

We have discussed a proposal that asks the Government to consider suspending the further sale of their shares in RBS while a review is conducted of the UK’s financial sector and the case for new banking models. It is a simple motion and all Opposition Members support it.

This discussion of the causes and consequences of RBS’s bail-outs and of the Chancellor’s ongoing plans to sell off RBS, with a resulting cost to the taxpayer, has also been an excellent opportunity to discuss the future of RBS and of British banking as a whole, including the new models and structures that may benefit the British economy. The Government must engage in this debate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) so effectively set out in his speech.

Labour Members want a thriving and dynamic banking sector that will best deliver for the economy and the electorate as a whole. In government, Labour decided to bail out RBS. That was a big decision—a £45 billion decision—but it was the right one given the calamitous situation in RBS, which my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) outlined so effectively. According to the National Audit Office, the decision was justified, and the price was backed by Institute for Fiscal Studies, but the scale of the bail-out—the money invested on behalf of the taxpayer—means that we cannot so lightly take a simple decision to return to business as usual.

The Chancellor argued in his Mansion House speech earlier this year that

“the easiest path for the politician is to put off the decision”.

I believe that the Chancellor has taken the easy decision to return, as I have said, to business as usual. The former shadow Chancellor my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) said at the time that

“taxpayers who bailed out the bank will want their money back… The Chancellor needs to justify his haste in selling off a chunk of RBS”.

Both those points still stand: taxpayers still want their money back, and the Chancellor must still justify his haste.

Let us be clear that we cannot afford to get this sale wrong. The evidence of the Move Your Money poll, which was presented to us in the media this morning and by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton, shows that the public think the Government are getting it wrong: 82% of those polled agree, given their own interest as the majority shareholder in RBS, that this should operate in the public interest, and 58% believe that the bank should be restructured to serve local economies throughout the UK.

[Jeremy Quin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Burgon]

No, because I want to give the Minister as much time as possible to respond.

It is incumbent on the Minister and the Chancellor to set out why they are moving ahead with the sale. What evidence does the Minister have that it is the right thing to do? This is the first opportunity for a full parliamentary debate on the decision of the Chancellor to privatise RBS since his announcement to the City at the Mansion House in June. He did make a statement the following day, but informing the House was clearly something of an afterthought, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) clearly spelled out. At the Mansion House, the Chancellor announced a share sale even if it meant a financial loss to the taxpayer. The 5% stake sold on 3 August has already realised a loss of £1 billion, and some calculations suggest that the total losses if the entire stake is sold in this way could be about £13 billion, which is almost a third of the £45.5 billion total cost of the bail-out.

The Government have provided no real evidence of why RBS should be returned to the private sector in its previous form or why it should happen now. A 13-page report by the Rothschild Group and a two-page letter from the Governor of the Bank of England have been mentioned. The authors of the Rothschild report stressed that they had

“not sought to address the question of whether the government should sell its stake in RBS, but rather when it should do so.”

In other words, the review did not consider the full range of policy options. Will the Minister elaborate on how moving RBS shares from public to private ownership will promote financial stability, and on whether the relevant Bank of England Committee has endorsed that view? Will she publish any evidence she has received in support of that view?

It is welcome that the right hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), the Chair of the Treasury Committee, has asked to see the advice provided by UKFI to ensure that the taxpayer, as shareholder, is getting good value from this Government-owned company. I support that call. Is the timing of this sale in the interests of taxpayers or bank customers, or does the Chancellor just want to sell off another state asset quickly to make his borrowing figures look better? Was this decision taken purely for ideological reasons, or is it based on expert, independent advice? Will the Minister explain how the Chancellor arrived at his decision? In line with the call by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), will the Minister share the evidence, if she has any, with Members of the House?

I will turn to alternative models and structures for RBS and the future of British banking. I ask the Government to consider undertaking a full review of UK banking that questions how financial institutions have operated before and since the crash, and what other models might be considered to diversify the sector and deliver for the country by strengthening the economy.

There has been a much needed discussion of banking practices and reform over the past five years. We have had Lawrence Tomlinson’s report, Sir Andrew Large’s report on RBS’s independent lending, Sir John Vickers’ Independent Commission on Banking, and the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and the work of the Treasury Committee, both under the excellent leadership of the right hon. Member for Chichester, to name but a few.

Given how badly things went wrong and the problems that still exist at the bank, the question we must discuss today is how we can do it better. We need to know not only why RBS failed, but whether it is delivering for the British economy now, and, if it is not, how we can do it better.

Labour was right to bail out RBS, but how has it operated since the Government became the majority shareholder? RBS has been bailed out, but there are still major problems with its operation, as the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) indicated in his speech. It has cut more than 30,000 staff since 2008, many of whom were backroom staff on about £20,000 per year. It is closing branches faster than any other bank, and 90 of those it has closed this year were the last branch in town.

The Tomlinson report said in 2011:

“Returning RBS and Lloyds to full private sector ownership in their current form would be a return to the banking landscape of 2003, possibly with even less competition… Given the lack of any real change in the banking sector, there is nothing that will stop 2018 being the same as 2008 unless radical action is taken now.”

The Andrew Large report found that RBS was failing SMEs. He said:

“A perception has risen among some SMEs that RBS is unwilling to lend.”

I want to take this opportunity to touch on how RBS has been treating businesses. The House will recall the Backbench Business debate on 4 December last year on the Financial Conduct Authority redress scheme, in which hon. Members raised the serious concerns of businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) stated:

“The only thing that is consistent and transparent is that the banks that caused the financial crash are profiting from selling products such as interest rate hedging products, which were bought by a company in my constituency, the Flanagan Group, and have caused it great difficulty.”

Similarly, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) talked about one of his local businesses, DK Motorcycles, which had been “badly let down” by RBS, but had

“finally escaped the clutches of RBS”.

He talked about

“people from small businesses who feel bullied by their banks”.—[Official Report, 4 December 2014; Vol. 589, c. 480-84.]

Information that I have seen this week shows that the serious concerns of businesses such as Flanagan’s have not gone away. I therefore want to take this opportunity to ask the Minister whether she will meet me, concerned MPs like my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton and businesses such as the Flanagan Group in his constituency to discuss the behaviour of RBS and what can be done to resolve the situation.

That leads me to the question that was put so well by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) of whether selling RBS in its current form represents good long-term value for the taxpayer, taking into account all the economic costs and benefits. Is the Minister aware of those who say that the low price of RBS shares represents a belief among market participants that the reforms to guarantee its future financial health have not yet been concluded? Is the Minister satisfied that all necessary steps have been taken to return RBS to a state where it will not be in trouble again? Finally, is the economy best served solely by private shareholder banking, or is there a case for a more diversified sector that includes publicly owned and directed institutions, mutuals, co-operatives, social enterprises and regionalised banking? With so many fundamental questions yet to be answered, it is right that we engage in a wider review of the UK’s financial sector that considers the case for establishing new models of banking that might better serve our economy.

In conclusion, there are many alternatives. It has been proposed from a number of quarters that RBS be broken up to deliver regional banks, including by the Tomlinson report, the New Economics Foundation, Civitas and ResPublica, as Opposition Members have mentioned. We must discuss how regional banks can help to rebalance the economy—perhaps the Chancellor took the opportunity while visiting Germany to look into that.

It is our responsibility to map out the best way forward for UK banking, so that it delivers for the electorate and the economy as a whole. That means suspending sales of shares in RBS, which give away taxpayers’ money to private shareholders. It is incumbent on the Chancellor to explain why he thinks that is the right thing to do, and that means engaging with a real review of the banking sector and alternative models that will deliver a diversified and more resilient economy. How we treat RBS now will demonstrate whether we have learned the lessons of the crisis—

Tax Credits

Jeremy Quin Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I hope that the hon. Lady recognises that the national living wage, which has been applauded, is already addressing exactly the concern that she has just raised. It has been a very effective way of raising the wages of those in employment.

[Vicky Foxcroft]

The national living wage that the hon. Gentleman is talking about is not a national living wage that would drive up people’s standards. People will be worse off because of the cuts to tax credits and people’s wages. That is why we are having this debate today.

The Government are a joke. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing and their policies are simply not joined up. While those on the Front Bench have been laughing at stories of people in housing trouble, Members from my party are working with trade unions to improve the lives of millions. I urge the Government to halt the cuts to tax credits until we can guarantee that no family will be worse off.

--- Later in debate ---

[Scott Mann]

Absolutely not. We are looking seriously at the proposal and we will make some announcements in the autumn statement.

North Cornwall, which I represent, is a modest-waged economy. We benefited from the economic improvements that the country has seen. We have seen rising school provision and many people in my constituency have benefited from the Help to Buy scheme. They are trying to improve their lot in life and trying to do the right thing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said so eloquently, the Government must ensure that we make it better for people to be in work than out of work, but we must support those who work.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I do not want to put my hon. Friend off his stride, but remarks were made from a sedentary position on the Opposition Benches during the earlier part of this speech. In the course of this debate we have had a non-partisan discussion. I thought I heard Opposition Members say that Labour is keen to see changes in tax credits and would move to cut the £30 billion of expenditure. Does my hon. Friend, like me, look forward to hearing such remarks made from the Opposition Front Bench, with an explanation of how the Opposition would cut the bills?

[Scott Mann]

I would indeed welcome that. We have heard nothing from the Opposition to illustrate how they would deal with the £30 billion deficit.