Royal Bank of Scotland

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman is right about being honest, of course, and in the interests of honesty, it is important to point something out. Since he seems to have suggested that the previous Government played no role in the failure of RBS and that it was just a failure of poor banking, let me remind him of what the then shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), said in 1997 when the then Government planned to change the regulatory system. He said:

“The process of setting up the FSA may cause regulators to take their eye off the ball, while spivs and crooks have a field day.”—[Official Report, 11 November 1997; Vol. 300, c. 732.]

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

While RBS has clearly had a turbulent past and taxpayers rightly want their money back, is not the really important point that RBS has gone from a bust bank under the last Government to a normal bank now, and that it has actually made a profit of over £800 million in the first three months of this year, and that business lending is up in the first quarter to over £13 billion, almost £8 billion of which was to small businesses?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. RBS has ended what I referred to as the rescue phase. Stephen Hester successfully brought the bank back from the brink and has started to refocus it, and the new strategy that RBS has set out will focus it even more on lending to UK businesses and households?