Adrian Bailey
Main Page: Adrian Bailey (Labour (Co-op) - West Bromwich West)Department Debates - View all Adrian Bailey's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
The liquidity auction undertaken by the Bank of England last week was very welcome, and the Bank is proposing future auctions. My hon. Friend, who chairs the Treasury Committee, has been prescient in pointing to some of the procyclical nature—if unintended—of some of the liquidity regulation in the United Kingdom in recent years. The Financial Policy Committee was set up to look at risks on both the downside and the upside. The Financial Services Authority must make its own independent decisions, but I am sure that it will have paid close attention to my speech and to the speech of the Governor of the Bank of England at the Mansion House.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
Notwithstanding the Chancellor’s warm words about the impact of quantitative easing, I have yet to meet a banker, a businessman or indeed a Government representative who can identify the benefits that have accrued as a result of its introduction. While I do not necessarily oppose it, all the evidence that I am being given by bankers suggests that lack of demand is causing the main problem. Will the Chancellor do something to stimulate consumer demand and investment confidence in order to maximise the potential that quantitative easing might bring?
Mr Osborne
In conducting its most recent assessment of the UK economy, the IMF explicitly looked at unconventional monetary policy tools that are currently being used, and concluded that quantitative easing was having a positive impact. I think that we should welcome that. I believe that we are able to pursue loose monetary policy—that we are able to use all the tools that are available to us on the monetary policy side—precisely because we have international credibility on the fiscal side.