Business of the House

Andrew Love Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and commend the initiatives that she has been taking in her constituency. I would welcome a debate to talk about the Work programme, which is helping 3 million people, together with a massive increase in apprenticeships, which number over 400,000 this year. I applaud the work that is taking place in her constituency to reduce the number of young people who are out of work.

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

This morning the Royal Bank of Scotland announced a pre-tax loss of £766 million and, at the same time, announced a bonus pool of exactly the same amount. In explanation, it tells us that the bonus pool has been cut in half, but my understanding from reports in the Financial Times is that that is being made up for by increases in people’s fixed salaries. This whole announcement takes place against a backdrop of thousands of redundancies up and down the country. For reasons very different from those of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), may I ask for an early debate on RBS, the banking system, and banking bonuses?

[Sir George Young]

The Financial Services Bill, which is going through the House, sets up a new financial structure for regulating the banks. There may be an opportunity to have the debate that the hon. Gentleman requests when the Bill comes back to the Floor of the House. I gently make the point that the party that he supports took no action at all to control bonuses when it was in government.