Global Economy

Debate between Lord Harrison and Lord Sentamu

Thursday 11th August 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harrison]

My Lords, I am sorry that the Minister has had to break off his holiday reading of your Lordships’ European Union Select Committee’s Sovereign Credit Ratings report. I hope that he will return and study it when he is next on the beach, and reflect on some of the words from the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott. These institutions exist but a healthier degree of scepticism might inform the City and, indeed, elsewhere to ensure that they are taken for what they are—an educated guess as to the future debt of sovereign nations.

Secondly, would the Minister consult his colleague on the business section about the regional growth fund, which I raised some months ago? I discovered and reported to your Lordships that it was unsuccessful at the moment, especially because of the £1 million bar required for small businesses to make application to that fund. My third point relates to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, in the European Sub-Committee B’s report on the single, internal market. Why do we not put greater effort into ensuring that the market comes to fruition, which would surely benefit UK companies perhaps more than any others within the 27 countries of the European Union?

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, I listened intently to the Minister but I did not hear in that Statement what the Government intend to do about inflation. The noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, believed when she was in the other place that inflation was a danger to savings, to investment and to growth. Inflation is rising; what are the Government going to do to cure that particular problem and difficulty? Secondly, debt in the United Kingdom is not just government debt. The greatest difficulty we have is personal debt. When austerity measures are there to cure the national debt, is it ever wise to then encourage the ordinary person to go out and spend? How can that be right? They, too, ought to have austerity measures for themselves.

Finally, I have listened intently and what I constantly hear is that our difficulty is—and it comes again and again—the mess that we inherited from the last Government. Is that right? They certainly left a big debt, but it certainly was not just that. What about the role of the banks? They got us into a mess, and I never hear it said that the mess was caused not just by the last Government but by our financial institutions that left us in debt. Is it not time to put the blame not only on one foot but on both feet?