Royal Bank of Scotland

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford). I associate myself with his final comments about RBS.

This is an important debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing it. I put my name to the motion simply because I feel that this issue is worthy of debate in the Chamber. I am not ideologically opposed to seeing banks in private ownership—I am probably guilty of being ideologically of the view that banks should be in private hands—but it is important that we consider this issue in depth and in the round. It is important that we look at the track record of RBS and what we want from it, to ensure that we make the right decision.

In the context of the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) was quite brave to argue the case for RBS going straight into private hands at this point in time. Unfortunately, I do not share his confidence in the regulator, having spent three or four hours with the Financial Conduct Authority again this week. RBS still has a huge credibility gap with the general public and, more importantly, with the small business community. That gap needs to be addressed before we can entrust RBS to act in a manner similar to the way it acted in the past. I would be delighted to stand here today and say that the culture in RBS had changed completely. I am utterly convinced that within RBS there are individuals who are making huge strides to change its culture, but am I convinced that all the bad eggs have been removed? Am I convinced that all possibility of actions that are detrimental to small businesses within RBS has been removed? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that RBS made mistakes. It is still making mistakes, while largely in public ownership, in relation to funding for small businesses and branch closures. Does he not think that before it is returned to the private sector, if that is going to happen, it has to prove that it can run itself competently in the interests of its customers?

[Guto Bebb]

I would certainly say there is a need to look in detail at the way RBS is performing. There are questions still to be asked about the corporate culture within RBS and questions raised by the Banking Commission need to be looked at.

It is important to state that this is not a left-right political argument. There are think-tanks on the right that think we should look again at the UK banking model. There was strong agreement when my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) stated that the loss of the mutual in the 90s was a mistake for the financial structure of the UK. This is not a left-right argument; it is about trying to get things right and ensuring that, as a result of intervention in the market that we did not want to make, we deliver a better banking system. It is important to state that the reason for intervention in the market was much wider than making a profit for the taxpayer: it was to ensure the UK economy was protected at a very difficult time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Lewis]

I think that there have been changes, but as I said earlier, in an intervention, the fact that RBS is back again, and possibly about to be investigated for yet more fraud, does not exactly encourage me to think that those changes have been deep enough.

As I was saying, the sale of RBS was announced not to Parliament, but to a white-tie dinner full of City grandees, in a speech that also promised the City a “new settlement” on financial regulation. We are now starting to see what that “new settlement” looks like, with the Government caving in to economic blackmail from the likes of HSBC, which threatened to move its headquarters unless key post-crisis measures such as the bank levy and the ring fence between retail and investment banking were watered down—that, I think, answers the point made by the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin); with the competition authorities ruling out action to break up big banks, even though they acknowledge that their customers are getting a raw deal; and with rumours that the Chancellor personally arranged the sacking of Martin Wheatley, the head of the Financial Conduct Authority, who has a reputation for being tough on bank misconduct.

Some commentators have even suggested that the Government’s desire for a quick sale of RBS is partly responsible for their magnanimous attitude towards the big banks: that the Government do not want to do anything that could damage the bank’s share price in the short term. If that were true, it would be incredibly short-sighted. We would effectively be trading in the chance to build a genuinely safer banking system in our haste to return to the pre-crisis status quo.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. Does he agree that when RBS was mainly in the public sector, both the present Government and the coalition missed an opportunity to try to act responsibly? An organisation called Move Your Money—it is run from my constituency, and I think that it was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor)—represents and campaigns for consumers, but it needs a partner in the banking sector that will do what local businesses and local people want.

[Clive Lewis]

I entirely agree. When we listen to the debate, we begin to feel that the Government are acting not in the interests of consumers, but in their vested banking interests. That seems to be their priority. We seem to be back to the pre-2008 mentality that the banks should be given whatever they want and we can have economic growth built on a house-price bubble fuelled by an oversized banking system without worrying too much about rebalancing our economy towards manufacturing or what we will do when the whole house of cards inevitably collapses.

We should consider, however, the effects on ordinary people like Andi Gibbs in my constituency who owned a business pre-crash. He was in effect mis-sold products by RBS and ended up with the now infamous global restructuring group. He not only lost his business; he lost his home, his wife, his family and his mental health. This is the price people pay when we do not get the banking system right. We now have a fantastic opportunity to get it right, and we must not squander it.