The Economy

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is right. When I say that we are all in this together, I mean every part of our Union. The Government are steadfast in their support and are determined to get through this crisis by supporting and working very closely with all members of our Union. I can tell him that from the Budget onwards £4 billion in Barnett consequentials have been provided to Scotland, £3.5 billion of which relates specifically to the range of announcements in response to the coronavirus. Those numbers are in addition to the UK-wide measures that support business, such as the jobs retention scheme.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) [V]]

I hope you are all doing well overseas in London.

Last week, a member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee said that monetary financing for financial fiscal spend with central bank money rather than Government bonds is something that central banks are always doing. Direct funding of Governments by their own central banks is therefore a fact. Can we remember the words of the late American economist J. K. Galbraith, who said that the process by which money is created is so simple, the mind is repelled? Will the Chancellor take this opportunity not to repeat the socially divisive policy of austerity? Coming out of this crisis, the last thing any of us needs is another round of austerity.

[Rishi Sunak]

Rather than commenting on monetary policy, which it is obviously not my place to do, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we are determined, as I have said, to preserve as much of the productive capacity of the UK economy as we can throughout this crisis. Such interventions will ensure that we can bounce back as strongly as possible and recover as much of our potential output as possible. Hopefully, that will put us in a strong position to carry on delivering on the agenda that we set out at the Budget: spreading opportunity to every part of the country and levelling up through investments in education, infrastructure and ideas.