Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The hon. Gentleman can rest assured that I will certainly do that. I do not think that he has given a fair representation of the role that we expect the prudential regulator to fulfil. What I will say about the prudential regulator and the fact that it will come under the aegis of the Bank of England is this: I hope that it will exercise discretion and judgment as well as simply making sure that boxes are ticked. The decision to allow Royal Bank of Scotland to buy ABN AMRO in 2007 might have ticked the various boxes in the regulations at the time, but it was clearly the wrong judgment. I expect and hope that in future our new regulator would be able to step in at that point.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Instead of making politically convenient and economically ludicrous pronouncements that it was the UK’s tripartite system of banking regulation that somehow caused the global credit crunch, can the Chancellor explain to the House why his own flagship banking reforms are now running late and why his cosy private talks with the banks on bonuses have failed to materialise? Was not today’s panic announcement just further proof that with this Chancellor, as CBI chief Richard Lambert has said, it is all politics and no economics?

[Mr Osborne]

The hon. Lady asks why the legislation is “running late”. The previous shadow Chancellor wrote to me and asked for pre-legislative scrutiny, and I agreed to the request. Obviously, that has not been communicated to those on the Opposition Front Bench.