LIBOR (FSA Investigation)

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I completely agree with the sentiments that my hon. Friend has expressed. I congratulate him and his Committee on acting swiftly to ask Mr Diamond to come and account for himself. As I said in my statement, we are looking at strengthening the criminal sanctions regime in general for market abuse and market manipulation, not just of LIBOR but in other parts of the market; and next week, as planned, the consultation on potential sanctions for directors of failed banks will be published. Sadly, the Government have been in this situation before with the FSA’s report into the failure of Royal Bank of Scotland, when the authority reported to us that it did not have the powers it would have liked to hold to account those responsible for the failure.

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I am sure that, in his quieter moments, the Chancellor will reflect on the fact that we are kidding ourselves if we think that the UK was the only country where this sort of thing was going on. The American authorities are just as concerned as our authorities. The situation is symptomatic of a culture that prevailed for much of the last decade, when, frankly, anything was allowed to go.

Does the Chancellor accept two things? First, LIBOR now has to have some degree of independent supervision. It cannot be a work of fiction. It is so important, especially at times of financial crisis—in 2008, we were concerned about the financial health of Barclays and other banks—to know exactly what it is costing them to borrow. Secondly, although the FSA may not have criminal powers, I am pretty sure it does have powers to take out of banks and put off the road the people who are responsible for doing this, the people who tolerated it, and those gained from it and condoned it. If that is not done, we have no chance whatsoever to move on in what remains a very important industry for this country.

[Mr Osborne]

The former Chancellor is of course right: there was poor financial regulation in American markets too, and part of the investigation has been conducted jointly with the American authorities—but LIBOR was set in London, which is why it is called LIBOR.

The right hon. Gentleman raised two points. The regulation and supervision of LIBOR is precisely what we are investigating, although we have to make sure that we are not regulating the LIBOR market as it existed three years ago. That market today is somewhat different and changing quite a lot, so we have to get the regulation right for 2012, not for 2006-07. His second point was on the individuals concerned and the FSA’s powers. I have spoken to Adair Turner and I am absolutely clear that the FSA is pursuing cases against individuals, but it is a prosecuting authority and it would not be appropriate for me to comment about those individuals and ongoing cases.

Jobs and Growth

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I have spent the last 35 minutes explaining how I am digging the country out of the hole that the right hon. Gentleman put us into.

Let me say something about the eurozone crisis. When eurozone central bank governors and Finance Ministers openly speculate on the possibility of Greek exit, the genie is out of the bottle. That and the Greek elections make this a perilous time. We are clear about the three steps the eurozone needs to take if its currency is to function properly.

First, countries in the periphery with high deficits and uncompetitive economies need to confront their problems head-on, as Governments in Ireland, Spain and Italy are. We are doing it in Britain too, but the adjustment our country must go through is made easier by loose monetary policy and a flexible exchange rate. The countries of the eurozone do not have that to help them, so the core of the eurozone, and the European Central Bank, need to do more to support demand and share the burden of adjustment.

Of course, ideas such as the project bonds put forward by the new French Government are worthy of serious consideration, but, fundamentally, the German Finance Minister is right when he says that rising wages in his country and increased domestic demand there can play a substantial role.

Secondly, the eurozone needs to follow what I described a year ago as “the remorseless logic” of monetary union that leads to greater fiscal union. As I said in the same interview, forms of collective support and responsibility must be developed. I echoed the view in many eurozone countries when I spoke of the possibility of eurobonds.

Thirdly, all of us in Europe, including the United Kingdom, need to address our continent’s lack of competitiveness. That involves structural reform to welfare, pensions and labour laws, and completing single markets in services and digital. It means all Europeans, including Britons, rediscovering the ambition and the ethic that made our continent the dynamo of the world economy for so many centuries. It is not that dynamo today. As the Prime Minister says in his speech today:

“The eurozone is at a cross-roads. It either has to make up or it is looking at potential break up.”

No one should underestimate the huge risks of the latter, but Britain will be prepared for whatever comes. We are making the necessary contingency plans. We will take the steps needed to secure our economic stability and protect our financial system. Above all, we will go on with the progress we have made in the last two years on reducing the structural deficit, keeping our credibility in the bond markets and keeping our interest rates low.

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

The Chancellor seems to be setting out quite a significant shift in the Government’s policy on what should be happening in Europe, in particular urging the German Government to do things in relation to promoting growth that many of us have argued for several months. Interestingly, they are not to apply to this country. Will he confirm that this is a significant shift, and will he add to his list that it is now desperately important that the eurozone looks at the health of some of the banks in Europe? The Spanish started last week. I do not know whether they have the strength to do what is necessary, but unless the banking system is significantly shored up, if the problems spreading from Greece continue—contagion and so on—we could have another major banking crisis on our hands. That would be an utter disaster.

[Mr Osborne]

I very much agree with the sentiment that the former Chancellor expresses. In the autumn of last year, and indeed before that, the Prime Minister, myself and others in the Government did consistently say, in public as well as in private, that surplus countries in the core of the eurozone needed to do more; that the European Central Bank needed to do more—I said it in the House and we said it in the ECOFINs and European Councils that we attended.

What has changed this week is that, first, the Greek elections have brought back the fear of contagion that had never really quite abated, despite the action of the European Central Bank over Christmas. Secondly, over the weekend and at the beginning of this week, central bank governors and Finance Ministers in the eurozone itself were openly speculating on Greek exit, and that has, as I said, let the genie out of the bottle. Some of the things that we were happy to say in private we are now also willing to say in public, because the issue is out there—on the agenda. We have not put the issue out there in the public domain, but now it is out there, put there by other people. We have very clear ideas of what the eurozone needs to do to make their currency work.

[Mr Darling]

The Chancellor is actually confirming what I thought. It is good that they are saying these things in public, but it does suggest that perhaps there is an opportunity to change direction in Europe. I know we will not agree about what is necessary in this country, but does the Chancellor agree with me that we need to be explicit now that austerity on its own will not work—we need policies of growth to go with it?

[Mr Osborne]

I completely agree that austerity alone is not enough, and that is why I have just been explaining how we have cut business taxes, set up enterprise zones, set up the national loan guarantee scheme and reformed the labour market. We have done all these things so that car companies expand their production and investment in Britain and choose Britain as a place to do business. Of course those countries in Europe need to undertake structural reforms to go alongside their efforts to get their public finances under control, but we have to ask ourselves this question: if you are running a high budget deficit in a single currency zone, and you do not have the support of loose monetary policy, you do need support from the core of the eurozone but to abandon a commitment to austerity will expose you to even greater pressure on the international money markets than those countries are already exposed to.

IMF

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Germany made a $55 billion dollar contribution to the IMF this weekend, which is a much greater contribution than the $15 billion that we are putting in, and it is the principal contributor to the various eurozone bail-out funds of which we are no longer part. However, I agree with the spirit of what my right hon. Friend is saying, which is that Germany needs to stand behind its currency. That is indeed a very important part of solving this problem.

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I think it right for us to support the IMF, but is not something very wrong when it is having to pass the hat around because it is becoming increasingly concerned that the policies being pursued by the eurozone—and, within it, some of the most developed and well-off countries in the world—are making it more likely that those countries will have to draw on international help to sort themselves out? Would it not be far better if the eurozone countries accepted that until they clean up their banking system once and for all, and until they recognise that the austerity policies that they are imposing on the peripheral countries simply will not work—and there are very few people around now who think that they will work—there remains a greater risk that these funds will have to be called upon? It seems to me that, while it is all very well to have a rescue fund, it would be far better to deal with the root causes of the problem.

[Mr Osborne]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s support for the decision to provide extra resources for the IMF. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2009, when we last made a contribution to it, and, as I said a moment ago, I think that that was one of the highlights—if not the highlight—of the last Labour Government.

The eurozone countries on the periphery are being asked to walk an incredibly difficult path. That is the consequence of being in a monetary union in which it is impossible to devalue. However, it is clear that Ireland, which has had to make some incredibly difficult decisions and take some very tough fiscal measures, is becoming dramatically more competitive—its current account is back in surplus, and its exports are increasing—so it is possible to walk that path.

I certainly agree with the right hon. Gentleman that further action is required on the banking systems in Europe. A European directive which is currently being debated transponds the Basel agreement into European law, and we are keen for it not to be watered down so that it is not used to disguise problems in the European banking system.

Amendment of the Law

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I want to return to the “nascent recovery” in just a moment, but first I should say that I was particularly pleased to hear the Minister refer to a number of successful growth industries including publishing, and in that connection I should draw the House’s attention to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Before turning to the question of growth—or, more accurately, my concern about the lack of it—I want to say a word about the 50p rate of tax, since I introduced it. At the time, I said it was a temporary measure. I did not particularly want to introduce it, but I took the view that, at a time when we were asking many people in this country to share the burden of meeting the increased cost of the downturn, it was right that those who had done well over the previous 10 years or so should bear their fair share of it. I do not have a philosophic attachment to that rate at all, therefore, but this is not a Budget in which I would have returned to the topic, simply because the incomes of many other people in this country are currently being squeezed and they are going to lose out this year. I would have tried to do something about their position first.

The documentation that the Treasury has produced on the measure reminds me of the stuff that was produced for the five tests in respect of the euro, in that so much evidence has been adduced in support of the Government position. Why did they not just say that they philosophically did not want the 50p rate so they were going to cut it? As the OBR says that its calculations are highly uncertain and it is very difficult to estimate behavioural effects, especially after only a year, and given that there are so many uncertainties and there will be so much forestalling, it is difficult for the Government to say, “Look, this wasn’t actually raising anything.” At a time like this, I think the fact that the rate brought in £1 billion and that we are talking about smaller sums in relation to some of the welfare reforms means that the Government cannot simply write it off. If they want to bring the rate down to 45p, that is fine, although I am bound to say that I have never understood the argument that someone will still work harder if the rate comes down to 45%, yet they will also work harder if they are told at the same time that they will be paying five times as much tax in the future. That seems a very odd argument to run.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making these interesting points. Was he as shocked as I was to see that, as a result of the measures that he introduced as Chancellor, there was £16 billion to £18 billion-worth of forestalling in 2009-10?

[Mr Darling]

Inevitably, there is some forestalling and there will be an awful lot more of it this year when people realise that they will pay a lesser tax rate next year. The hon. Lady makes a point, but perhaps not the one she intended.

The real problem we face as a country is the lack of future growth. I am concerned about that, because our borrowing levels are still high. The Chancellor is still having to borrow £150 billion more than he set out to borrow in his first Budget, in 2010, and his room for manoeuvre is very slight. He has given away about £2 billion this year. He says that he is going to get that back in two years’ time, but £1.5 billion of it is coming out of the reserve. That is not normally what we would expect a Chancellor to be doing if he is saying that he is conducting his finances in a prudent manner.

Of course, a lot of what the Chancellor is saying is dependent on cuts still to be specified—he used to criticise us when we did not specify these things. An awful lot more cuts are yet to be implemented and yet to be specified. When the Budget figures show that borrowing will be only £1 billion less than the Government thought, it is easy to see that we are right on the margins at the moment and that, unless we get growth going, the chances are that that borrowing will increase, not decrease. The need to get growth going is paramount.

We are already on plan B, in that what the Chancellor announced in his autumn statement last year was rather different from the course he set out on 12 months earlier. We are also relying heavily now on monetary policy—on quantitative easing and the Bank of England continuing low interest rates—to try to bring about a recovery. I welcome some of the things that the Government have done, but it is sobering to read the OBR analysis that the Budget will have a limited effect on growth. The best it can say is that the cutting of corporation tax will get us 0.1% of growth, which shows how much more the Government have to do.

I do welcome some of the measures the Government announced. Of course we are in favour of the patent box, which we introduced. It is very impressive that GlaxoSmithKline was, within hours, suddenly able to decide that it would open new factories and new production. It is just a pity that some of the new investment will take three or four years, if not longer, to be put in place. I also certainly welcome what was done for the creative industries. The deputy leader of the Labour party, who spoke for us earlier, made the point that I introduced a number of these proposals in 2010. They were rubbished by the coalition in 2011, but they are back again in 2012, and I wholeheartedly support them. I am also glad that the Green investment bank is coming to Edinburgh, and I hope that it will be up and running fairly quickly.

Turning to the other end of the country, the Government’s recognition that they have to look again at airport capacity in the south-east of England is welcome. It is a difficult issue, it is 10 years since we looked at it and we need to get a move on with it. However, a lot of the measures that have been announced are small or will not be implemented for a long time. Public investment is set to drop. I hope that the private sector comes in on infrastructure and so on, but unless we do more we are simply not going to get the investment we need.

Lastly, I wish to discuss the cloud hanging over us all—Europe. At the moment, we have something of a lull, as it has gone out of the headlines, but the problems have not gone away. We should all be grateful for what the European Central Bank has done, as it almost certainly prevented at least one, if not two, banks in continental Europe from getting into trouble earlier this year. However, the deep-seated problems that Spain has, that Italy has and that Greece has have not gone away. I hope that we will use whatever influence we have to try to engage with the eurozone, so that, for once, they get ahead of the game, because until that happens, that situation will hold back our prospects of growth even more.

Banking Commission Report

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I welcome the Vickers report and I am glad to hear that it is being implemented, but will the Chancellor be careful about overselling this? This would not have stopped the failure of Northern Rock or HBOS, and the idea that a future Government might decline to step in and rescue an investment bank if it failed is simply not credible. Look what happened to Lehmans when the Americans tried that. So these problems have not gone away. Will he accept that if his reforms of the Bank of England are to work, he has to look at the governance of the Bank, as the Treasury Committee recommended recently? The Bank made some bad mistakes in the past and we have to face up to that, just as we have faced up to the mistakes of the Financial Services Authority. Will he urgently accept the need for European Governments to shore up their banks, because there is very real risk, if we have a sovereign default in the next few weeks, that their banks will be affected because they are not adequately capitalised? If he is still on speaking terms with his opposite numbers, that is something that he should attend to very quickly.

[Mr Osborne]

I can assure the former Chancellor that we are still on speaking terms. Indeed, I had an hour and a half conference call just before I came into the Chamber, so I can promise him that a lot of speaking is still going on. The question he rightly asks is: where is the action? The eurozone has taken a number of important steps, but we still need to see a more credible firewall, which will enable it to stand behind its banks even more effectively.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s specific point about the Bank of England and whether this could have prevented what happened when he was Chancellor, of course institutions can get things wrong, and the Bank of England got things wrong in the run-up to the crisis, but it is sensible to try to have one body that is looking at both the prudential risks in individual firms and the overall systemic risks in the economy. The tripartite system clearly failed to do that. I do not think that before he became Chancellor it met in person at a principal level, or perhaps only once. The system did not work and many Committees of this House have pointed that out. For the Bank of England to have clear responsibility for monitoring risks is sensible. As to whether all this could have prevented what happened, I draw attention to two points. First, there are higher capital requirements in Vickers that would have better protected banks such as HBOS, and, secondly—the biggest challenge of all that he had to face—it is precisely the collapse of a large universal bank such as the Royal Bank of Scotland that Vickers is seeking to address. No one pretends that it is easy, but we believe, Vickers believes and many others believe, that the idea of ring-fencing the retail operations focused on the UK will give the Chancellor of the day greater opportunity to protect what really matters to the UK economy without having to resort to bailing out the entire institution.

The Economy

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I hope that the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) will forgive me for not following him, given the short time I have available.

The real problem we face in this country, in Europe and, to a large extent, in America too, is the lack of growth. The Chancellor opened his remarks by saying that the previous Government had been too optimistic about some of their forecasts. He gave—how shall I put it?—a somewhat incomplete précis of my book. In that connection, I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Surely the Chancellor would accept that forecasting is extremely difficult at a time like this. Perhaps when he goes back to No. 11 at night, he will reflect on the fact that he was wildly optimistic about both growth and borrowing. I do not imagine for one minute that he expected to be standing up a week ago to announce that he was borrowing £158 billion more than he thought he would be borrowing in the summer of last year. The reason for that, substantially, is that we have less growth, with fewer people paying tax, more people dependent on benefits and, as the Office for Budget Responsibility set out, incomes being squeezed.

All that was perfectly foreseeable. Many people—Labour Members and many others—said that this would happen. The problem was not just the rate at which public expenditure was being cut, but the fact that the mood music that the Government deliberately set out to orchestrate last year was that everything was full of gloom and doom, so it is not surprising that businesses did not invest and that individuals decided to hold back on their expenditure. That is precisely what is happening in this country and in Europe, to which I shall return shortly. All this was foreseeable.

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

Following on from my right hon. Friend’s point about cuts, is he particularly worried about the construction industry, not least because so many small businesses are dependent on it?

[Mr Darling]

I am, and I shall come on to that in a minute, but I want to make a further point. If the OBR comes out with another downward revision of its figures at the time of the Budget next March, does it mean that we are going to embark on yet another round of reducing expenditure? It this not the same sort of argument that we had in the 1930s? The prevailing orthodoxy did not work then, and it will not work now. My guess is that this argument is going to dominate politics and economics over the next few months—not just here, as I said, but in Europe.

My right hon. Friend mentioned the construction industry. I welcome some of the measures the Chancellor announced on infrastructure, but with this big caveat. First, if he looks at some of them, particularly the road announcements, he will see that they have been announced by successive Governments over many years. He will no doubt have been told by the Treasury that the problem with these big plans is the huge lag between the time they are announced and the time we see them. I remember opening the M6 expressway and a reporter said, “This must be a great triumph for the Labour Government.” I said, “Indeed, it was. Harold Wilson would have been absolutely delighted to see it built.” That illustrates the point.

Although this is not a transport debate, I am glad that the Government are looking at the issue of aviation, but they cannot escape from the consequences of the decision not to proceed with the expansion at Heathrow. I know this is no longer my party’s policy, but I believe that issue needs to be looked at again for the future prosperity of the country. The High Speed 2 line is no substitute for it.

The Chancellor has, of course, had to change course. He was very much against quantitative easing. When I introduced it, he said it was the last act of a desperate Government, but it now turns out that it is a jolly good thing and we can expect to get even more of it. I suspect we will need more as the economy slows down. As I said, he has also had to introduce the infrastructure projects to try to help—although not enough, in my view. I think he will have to do more, particularly about jobs for young people facing unemployment, which is going to be a real economic problem as well as a real social problem. Many of us here remember the lost generation in the 1980s. Many of those individuals never got over the experience of having no job when they left school, college or university. The Government are going to have to come back to this, no matter what the Chancellor says, because the outlook is such that the Government are going to have to at some stage accept that at a time like this only the Government can take the action necessary to stimulate the economy and restore confidence. That brings me to Europe.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend talks about the effect of the Office for Budget Responsibility and the forward outlook. How does he view its projections for returning to the trend rate of growth in two or three years’ time, given the drastic revision that has taken place between the forecast in March and the forecast last week?

[Mr Darling]

As it happens, there is a passage in my book about the trend rate of growth. I believe that economists find it terribly difficult to work out what the right trend rate of growth is. On the point raised in the Select Committee this morning, I am surprised that the OBR has said that the productive capacity of the economy has been so reduced, partly because of lack of productivity. Part of the OBR’s problem is that it fails to recognise that businesses have retained labour through this recession in the hope that they will need it when recovery comes. One worry is that if businesses think there will not be a recovery, the people they have held on to will then lose their jobs. No doubt the Select Committee will look into that.

Let me touch on what is happening in Europe. I appreciate that it is a risky business because what is happening today might not be what is happening tomorrow or the day after that. The Chancellor touched on it and I hoped he would say rather more about what is being proposed—if, indeed, he knows.

As far as I can see, the agreement reached between President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel on Monday seems to be a re-creation of the stability and growth pact—and we know which were the first two countries that actually broke it. I have a feeling that they are trying to reach a sufficient political agreement to give Mario Draghi of the European Central Bank sufficient cover to do what we all know the ECB has to do in terms of intervening in the market. It does not go any further than that. Mario Draghi made a good speech last week, in which he said, “Look, we’re ready to intervene, but you lot have got to show willing.” Interestingly, that is exactly the same position that Jean-Claude Trichet took in the ECB at the last ECOFIN meeting I attended in May 2010, to which the Chancellor is fond of referring, when it was necessary for Ministers in the European Union and the eurozone to decide on sufficient action to allow the ECB to intervene.

I am glad that the ECB is going to intervene, but the agreement reached on Monday does not go far enough because it does not address the fundamental questions and fundamental problems of having a single currency without something approaching fiscal or economic union. That was not addressed and neither was the Greek problem, which will not go away because that fix will not work. The rescue fund is still a virtual one and, of course, there is the whole question of the recapitalisation of European banks, which remains for next summer.

[Matthew Hancock]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Darling]

I would love to, but if think that if I do it counts against me, so I shall carry on speaking for a minute and 22 seconds, if I may.

I know we will be represented in the Council at the end of this week. This is a debate that we cannot afford to stay out of. No one is advocating that we should join the euro, and it is simply not going to happen in anything like the foreseeable future, but what happens to the eurozone, who is in it, the implications of a breakdown whether it be orderly or disorderly—all that matters very much. I hope that the British Government will make it clear to our European partners that we really are partners and in that spirit try to bring about a resolution. As far as I can see, the present arrangements struck between the French and the Germans seem to be yet another fix. They will buy time, but they will not sort out the fundamental problems. Until those fundamental problems are sorted out, we will still have that dark cloud of uncertainty in Europe, which would be bad for Europe, bad for this country and therefore bad for growth and for jobs. For that reason, we have a real interest in helping to bring about a resolution to that problem if we possibly can.

Eurozone Crisis

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

There is increasing evidence that people are focused on the structural issues facing the European economy. Indeed, when my hon. Friend looks at the agreement issued by the eurozone last night, he will see that when it refers to Spain and Italy, it stresses the importance not just of getting their budget deficits down, but of plans to increase the pension age and make labour legislation more flexible and competitive—all the sorts of things that this Government are pursuing here in Britain, although every one of those measures has been opposed by the Labour party.

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

Does the Chancellor agree that one reason why the bank recapitalisation worked three years ago was that we were able to provide precisely the sort of detail required to reassure markets that we were taking the necessary action? When can we expect to hear, for example, exactly how much Greek debt is to be written down, and which banks in continental Europe will require additional funds from Governments or other sources? When can we expect to hear more detail about the rescue fund? In relation to that, can he let us know whether there is a commitment on the part of the eurozone to provide real cash—or are we looking at a sophisticated financial instrument of the sort that might have contributed to the problems in the first place?

[Mr Osborne]

I fear that we are looking at a sophisticated financial instrument here. However, it is clear that Germany and the Bundestag were not prepared to provide further resources. The European Central Bank was not prepared to provide those resources either, for all sorts of reasons to do with its history and those of other central banks in Europe. They have therefore turned to those options to try to leverage up the money they have already committed. That is the sensible choice for them, given those other constraints. They are trying to get other private investors from around the world, potentially including the involvement of sovereign wealth funds, to leverage up the fund.

Of course, I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the sooner we get the agreement in detail, the better. That applies equally to what he said about private sector involvement in the Greek write-down. A mistake made earlier this year, on 21 July, was that eurozone members put together a deal and then took months to implement it and get the detail. He is completely right to say that yes, we made some good progress overnight, but the job is not finished yet. The eurozone now has to get the detail and reassure the markets that it has got a grip of the situation. That is where we will continue to exert British pressure.

Jobs and Growth

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

As the Chancellor has referred to my book—and no doubt others will do so, too—perhaps I should draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

From listening to the Chancellor, it is easy to forget one important fact. When we left office in 2010, our economy was growing; 12 months later, our economy is not growing at all. Growth has stalled, probably for more than a year. Despite everything that the Chancellor and his colleagues said during the last election about its all being the fault of the last Labour Government and nothing to do with global problems or Europe, our economy was growing. Now, 16 months after that general election, while the Chancellor has been in charge and responsible for setting the economic direction, our economy has stopped growing. Even a few months ago people believed that we might see a slow but gradual climb out of recession into growth, but now, right across the world, people are seriously worried that we could be in for a prolonged period of stagnation—at tremendous cost to the country, as today’s unemployment figures show.

[Sajid Javid]

rose—

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Darling]

According to Madam Deputy Speaker’s ruling, I have only eight minutes, which means I can give way twice to my benefit; after that, it counts against me. I will, however, give way to the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid).

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He said in his recent memoirs that Labour still needs to offer a “clear and viable alternative”. Does he believe that he has heard that today from the shadow Chancellor?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Darling]

As we have heard today, the shadow Chancellor and the Labour party are still adopting my policy on the deficit. It was a sensible policy when I first announced it in 2008, and it is still a sensible policy today. The heart of my present argument is that while no one doubts that the deficit has to come down, the judgment to be made is about how fast we bring it down and the risks involved in doing so too fast and ending up crashing the economy. That is the position we have reached today.

It is interesting that the International Monetary Fund has been much discussed this afternoon. It is worth reading what the IMF and Christine Lagarde, who talks a lot of sense on these issues, have been saying. Of course the IMF is always going to be wary of taking on one of its principal shareholders, but we do not have to read too far between the lines to see what the IMF is saying. It is saying quite clearly that there is now a serious risk of a slow-down in major economies, including our own, which will result in not less but more borrowing, and economies stagnating.

It is also interesting that when the Bank of England announced last week further measures of quantitative easing, which I support, it did so against a completely different background from its first announcement in 2009. The Bank is now worried about what is happening in Europe, which means that the economy is slowing down. The Bank is seriously worried about the lack of growth. The QE announcement last week is just the beginning of what might be called plan B or even plan 1A, because the Bank is worried. That is why it is changing direction.

I was pleased to hear the Chancellor talking about credit easing for businesses on top of the £75 billion. Surely that is at least some recognition of the fact that the plan he announced with so much confidence last summer, which was going to do so much to reduce our borrowing, is not working. He has to adapt it and my bet is that—whether it be in the autumn statement in a month’s time or in next year’s Budget—we will see more measures that acknowledge that the policy pursued by this Government is simply not working. If we do not change it, we will pay a very heavy price.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Darling]

I will gain another minute by giving way to the hon. Gentleman, so I will do so.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am grateful. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us how he voted in the IMF subscription vote?

[Mr Darling]

I have always made my position clear. One of the big achievements of April’s G20 meeting, led by the then Prime Minister my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), was to get countries to sign up to an increase in IMF funding. That has always been my position, and I am not going to depart from it because I believe that the IMF has a central role to play. With respect to the hon. Gentleman, his intervention does not get him off the central point of this debate, which is what is different now from the position when we left office. My deficit reduction plan was on the back of an economy that had started to grow, so my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor is quite right to ask himself what we need to do now, 16 months later, when economic growth has stalled, and what other measures are necessary to get the economy going.

My right hon. Friend is also quite right to say that, although a few months ago very few people were talking about the need to reduce taxes, bring forward capital spending or take measures to help businesses, that has now become common currency among many commentators. It is only the present Government who simply do not accept that the plan they announced 16 months ago is not working. As my right hon. Friend said, the Chancellor has had to downgrade his growth forecast four times. I remember his having great fun at my expense when saying that my growth forecasts were wrong. Actually, mine lasted a lot longer than his. He should reflect on that and on the fact that he is having to borrow more.

I raised another point about quantitative easing with the Chancellor on Monday and I hope we will hear more about it. If that money does not leave the vaults of the banks and get out on to the high streets, it will have failed. I know that the Chancellor has had exactly the same trouble with the Bank of England as I had. I could not persuade it to buy corporate assets; he has obviously failed as well, which is why he has had to think up his own scheme. We really need to get that money out on to the high streets; if it is not manifested in the form of loans to businesses, it will simply not work.

I note that the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) is no longer in his place. He said that quantitative easing works only when there is a credible policy. Given that the Bank of England has said that it worked, we must have had a credible policy at the time. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not here to hear that; he might want to ponder it when he reads Hansard tomorrow morning, as I am sure he will. The Chancellor needs to ensure that the money gets out on to the high street; otherwise, it will fail. It is remarkable that the Bank of England is almost now doing what the Government should be doing. It recognises that the policy is not working, which is why it has embarked on another round of quantitative easing.

The Chancellor is fond of saying that all our problems are on account of the eurozone. That, too, is remarkable. When he came into office, the Tory story, backed by the Liberal Democrats, was that it was all the fault of the last Labour Government. All was fine with the rest of the world, so it was just Labour’s overspending that was responsible. Incidentally, the Chancellor supported it right up to the end of 2008 and the Liberal Democrats supported it until the day after the general election, so it could not have all have been wrong at that stage. Now they are saying that the problem is not domestic at all; that it is all to do with what is happening in the eurozone.

Of course the eurozone is a major problem and it is becoming a bigger one by the day. I hope the Chancellor was right when he said at the beginning of the week that wiser counsels are prevailing in Europe, but I am not so sure. We should remember this: although people talk about the fact that the German Parliament ratified the deal a couple of weeks ago—and Slovakia will probably put it through later this week—it was in fact agreed in July, and it is blindingly obvious that it is now out of date. At that time no one would talk about Greek default, whereas now everyone knows that Greece will default, and the only question is whether it will be done in a managed way or become a disorderly breakdown.

Another thing that is obvious—the Chancellor acknowledged this on Monday—is that the austerity measures being imposed on Greece simply are not working. Greece is reaching a point at which it is unlikely to be able to repay the interest on its borrowing, let alone reduce its borrowing and debt. The policy of austerity endorsed by far too many European countries over the last 16 months or so worked at first, but it is not working now, and Greece is living proof of that.

I hope that something compelling and convincing will be agreed at the G20 in a couple of weeks’ time, but I have my doubts. The trouble with the eurozone countries is that they are still fighting as though nothing has changed since the early summer, which has been their position since the early part of 2009. If we have any influence I hope that we will bring it to bear. If we do not, there is a risk, as the Chancellor himself recognises, that if things go wrong in the eurozone they will affect this country. While I agree with the Chancellor that we should certainly should not contribute to the bailing out of the eurozone, he is also right to say that a break-up of the euro at the present time is the last thing that the world economy needs, ourselves included.

That brings me to our policies back at home. I have always believed that reducing public expenditure at such a rate, in a climate in which the private sector is not taking its place, risks crashing the economy. I reached that view when my party was in office, and I still hold it today. The evidence seems to suggest that that is precisely what is happening now, and that is why it is so damaging.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Darling]

I will not, because it will count against me if I give way again.

I hope that the Chancellor will produce measures to deal with the situation. He may wish to embark on infrastructure projects, although in my experience that is much easier said than done, and the interval between making a plan and putting a shovel into the ground can be a long one. Some of the road schemes that the Chancellor mentioned were planned by the Labour Government—one of them back in the 1970s—so we should not get too carried away about them. However, he should certainly introduce the tax reductions and other measures to help businesses to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) ascribed such importance.

It is clear to me that we cannot resign ourselves to circumstances in which people feel that nothing can be done, that it is all inevitable, and that nature must take its course. Governments can make a difference—they made a difference two years ago at the G20 in 2009—but we currently have no international leadership, and we have precious little leadership from our own Government when it comes to what we should be doing in this country. There is, and there must be, an urgency attached to getting these things right, but that means a change of policy here at home as well.

Eurozone

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

As my right hon. Friend will know, in its most recent quarterly bulletin, the Bank of England did an assessment of the impact that the previous round of quantitative easing had had; it thought that that had increased GDP by 1.5% to 2%, but that it had also increased inflation. However, the Bank was very clear that in recommending or requesting further quantitative easing, it was still aiming to hit its inflation target in the required two-year period.

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I am glad that the Chancellor now realises that the policy of quantitative easing was, in fact, a good one and did help get our economy growing. Can he tell us how he plans to ensure that the additional £75 billion gets out of the bank vaults and on to the high street? He has mentioned the credit support scheme, on which we have not yet got some details, but I am sure that he would agree that it is important that the money finds its way out into the economy.

On the question of Greece, is there now an acceptance that the present austerity policies being visited on that country are not going to work? Were the reports coming out of the IMF a couple of weeks ago—that there would have to be some sort of write-down of Greek debts—accurate?

[Mr Osborne]

Let me deal first with the right hon. Gentleman’s question about quantitative easing. I think there is general recognition that what worked was the increase in asset prices and also pushing investors up the risk chain. I defer to the right hon. Gentleman’s view on this, but what did not work so well was an increase in bank lending; that did not happen as a result of QE, although the Government at the time hoped that it would. As he knows better than anyone, the Government also created the asset purchase facility with the idea that the Bank of England might purchase some corporate paper; it ended up purchasing only around £1 billion-worth.

I thought that it was sensible, therefore, that alongside the Bank’s action on QE we separately, as a Government accountable to the House, looked at credit easing options, which directly try to address the bank lending issue and enable the Government—again, directly accountable to elected people—to look at a range of assets that one can buy, such as small business loans.

On the question of Greece, I have to be a little careful; I alluded to that in my statement when I said that the advice that we are giving on Greece is private. But our public intent is very clear: the Greek situation has to be resolved. It is very debilitating for the world that at the moment each week goes past and there is another event risk around Greece—the troika turns up, there is a parliamentary vote in Greece. Of course, a lot of the frustration of eurozone members is not so much at the impact of austerity, but at the feeling that they have that the Greeks have not done what they promised to do. But as I say, if the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will continue to give my specific advice on Greece to my eurozone neighbours in private.

Independent Banking Commission Report

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Well, I think my right hon. Friend was certainly alive when Messrs Glass and Steagall were, which most Members of the House could not say.

I respect my right hon. Friend’s experience. He has long argued for some form of separation between retail and investment banking and has been consistent in making that argument. Events have borne out his advice to successive Governments.

We asked John Vickers carefully to consider the timetable, and he gave a lot of thought to it. He recommends that all the changes should be completed by 2019, but that other changes should take place at earlier dates—he specifies those dates in his work. The 2019 back-stop is appropriate, because that is the date when the international rules also need to be in place. We should not underestimate the huge amount of work to be done in this House to get the report turned into legislation that works and that people do not find ways around.

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Chancellor for plugging my book, but when he gets a chance to read it, I think that he will see that political parties on both sides of the House went along with the culture that led to some of the problems we had to deal with and that some of the shrillest voices calling for light-touch regulation were those of Members now sitting on the Treasury Bench. Will he tell us a bit more about what discussions he proposes having with other Governments, in view of the interconnected nature of the banking system, which is only as strong as its weakest part? Will he also deal with the erroneous assumption that there will never be a case in the future when a Government might have to bail out an investment bank? We should remember what happened to Lehman Brothers. It cannot ever be said that we will never have to do that again, even with a bank that is not thought now to be systemically important. I welcome the report, but it has to be seen as part of a wider range of reforms necessary to make our banking system stronger and more secure.

[Mr Osborne]

I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s experience of having been through all that he went through as Chancellor. He had to deal with these problems in real time over long weekends, and I have paid tribute previously to the work that he did on behalf of our country in those difficult months. As for his book, I have only just started reading it, but as far as I can see, I get off relatively lightly compared to the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown).

The right hon. Gentleman made a good point about the interconnectedness of the banking system. The Basel rules are significant, and I believe that that process was initiated when he was Chancellor and representing the United Kingdom. New arrangements have been agreed in record time. It took 10 years to come up with Basel II, but about 18 months to come up with Basel III. The international rules are important because they help us to deal with investment banks in foreign jurisdictions, such as Lehman Brothers, and to protect all globally systemically important banks and give them bigger cushions. As he well knows, new proposals are coming down the track for additional capital requirements on the most globally systemically important banks. That is significant. Also, we are putting in place the recovery-and-resolution ideas that, again, he initiated when he was Chancellor in order to ensure that we can deal with the failure of the UK end of an American investment bank. That will ensure that these banks do not just live internationally and die nationally, but that we can resolve any problems.

I would make a broader point, however. Yes, we have to do that at an international level, but we also have to consider regimes that have large concentrations of banking, such as Switzerland—let us, for a moment, leave aside Ireland and Iceland, which were obviously virtually bankrupted by what happened. It is interesting that Switzerland, which, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, is as keen as anyone to remain internationally competitive, has introduced its own domestic regime for its banks. It is wholly appropriate for us to consider doing that in this country while, of course, recommending to other countries changes that we think are sensible for all jurisdictions.