G20

Andrew Love Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The IMF has extremely tough and clear rules about when it can and when it cannot lend money. That is why it cannot put, and nor would we support its putting, money into a euro bail-out fund or into a special purpose vehicle. That is not the role of the IMF—that must be the role of the European financial stability facility—but what the IMF can do is lend money and help countries that are in distress. As I said, no country has ever lost money on lending it to the IMF, because it is the senior creditor in all these arrangements.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister keeps talking about rebalancing the economy. We have seen a 20% to 25% reduction in the value of the pound, which should have made us competitive, yet the private sector is not taking up the slack because there is no confidence out there. Do we not need another plan to build confidence?

[The Prime Minister]

The worst thing we could do for confidence would be to abandon the plans to deal with our debt and our deficit, because we can see what is happening in countries such as Italy that do not have a proper plan for getting on top of their debts: they have higher interest rates and all the problems that they bring. The hon. Gentleman is right that we have had a depreciation in our currency that should lead us to be more competitive. If one looks at the export figures from Britain to countries such as India and China, one sees that there is a good increase in our exports.