Lord Peston
Main Page: Lord Peston (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Wilcox
My noble friend is right. We are looking at how the long-term proposals can be best served. Short-termism can be very advantageous, but it can also be dangerous in the long term, and we are only too delighted to support him in his view.
Baroness Wilcox
My noble friend puts it extremely well. Of course short-termism and long-term planning go together. These are difficult times. We need to do the very best that we can. It is worth remembering that the United Kingdom has a world-leading corporate governance and company law regime. The World Bank rates the United Kingdom as the best place in Europe and the fifth best in the world for doing business. It is vital that the UK continues to be seen as world-leading in corporate governance.
Lord Peston
I did not give way because I was under the impression that the coalition was still part of the Government. Whatever the state of play is on that side of the House, is not the best performing economy in Europe Germany, to take an obvious example? Short-termism is frowned upon in Germany, where the shareholders are committed to the firms in which they hold shares in the longer term, as are the workers. We advised the Germans immediately after we won the Second World War. They ended up rich and we ended up a comparative economic disaster. Is it not time the Government stopped holding back from taking a view on this and actually started, as my noble friend Lord Myners said, to do something?
Baroness Wilcox
I am interested to hear the noble Lord’s question. In the more than a decade in which his party was in power, it did absolutely nothing to advance from the position after the Second World War that he quotes.