Euro

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they are seeking to safeguard the United Kingdom’s interests in discussions with European Union partners on the future of the euro.

[The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)]

My Lords, a stable euro area is in the UK’s interests and the Government are actively engaged in seeking to achieve this. While acknowledging the need for greater euro area fiscal integration, the Government are working to ensure that the UK is not part of that integration and that our influence on and interests in the single market, competition policy and financial services are safeguarded. We have ensured that the UK will not participate in the European stability mechanism.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, which would be more dangerous for Britain—financial and fiscal integration of the eurozone, with Britain marginalised in a minority bloc and outgunned in EU decision-taking; or disintegration of the eurozone, with its attendant chaos; or, most likely, a combination of the two? With eurozone countries objecting to Britain’s interference, and with both the coalition and the Conservative Party riven by internal disagreement, how can the Prime Minister hope to exercise useful influence or, indeed, to save his Government from being destroyed by Europe?

[Lord Sassoon]

I really do think that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, puts up completely false choices and alternatives here. The fact is that significant progress has been made overnight to stabilise the eurozone. A lot more work needs to be done to fill in the detail but that is a first major step. I see that the noble Lord is nodding his head. That is point number one. Secondly, the idea that the UK is going to be marginalised in the “euro-outs” is simply not true. On Sunday, the Prime Minister established the key principle that we would be there, as we were yesterday, with a voice at the table on all matters involving all 27 EU member states. The idea behind the Question is that somehow it is just the UK versus the rest. We must be reminded that the other euro-outs include Poland, Sweden, Hungary, the Czech Republic and four others. We will play a critical part in driving forward the single market, and that is very important to the euro area.

Public Expenditure: Deficit Reduction

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords, lest they forget it, that we have introduced an independent Office for Budget Responsibility so that we can no longer keep fiddling the numbers and restating the cycle like the previous Government did. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest numbers, produced at the Budget, confirmed that we are on track to meet the Chancellor’s fiscal mandate on the rolling five-year period.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, does the Minister really believe that the automatic stabilisers will do the trick? Is it not a mark of leadership to be able to admit that you have got it wrong? Is it not now time for the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to acknowledge that their strategy of drastically reducing public expenditure cannot enable the UK economy to revive when there is no sign anywhere else on the skyline of demand for what the UK economy is able to offer?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am not quite sure who should admit what they got wrong, but the former Chancellor, Alistair Darling, made a complete mea culpa when he said, “We got it totally wrong, raising national insurance and putting a tax on jobs”. He said that there was no credible economic policy at the last election, which is why Labour lost.

We have introduced a policy that is on track to get the economy growing. It is the underpinning of the economy by a clear fiscal plan on which we can build. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister are working very hard on the growth of the economy, which is founded on the stabilisation of the deficit that we inherited.

Taxation: Deficit Reduction

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. I completely agree with his sentiments. This is not a Government who believe in medium and long-term high marginal rates of taxation. We have to incentivise the private sector to go out and generate wealth in order to deal, among other things, with the rebalancing of the economy which is now so necessary.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, does the noble Lord really expect us to believe that engineering a wholesale reduction in demand in the economy is the way to prepare for growth? Will the noble Lord be candid and say whether he considers that the Government are more politically vulnerable on account of their failure to provide growth, or of their failure to provide fairness?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I will cite the latest figure this week for quarterly growth in the economy. The naysayers said that growth in the last quarter would be 0.4 per cent, but it was 0.8 per cent, coming on top of 1.2 per cent in the previous quarter. With more than 300,000 new private sector jobs created in the second quarter, that is the way in which we will deal with the economic situation.