Financial Transaction Tax and Economic and Monetary Union

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

GDP is a measure of productivity, but it is not a measure of wealth, and it is not a measure of growth in the real economy. Derivative volumes have ballooned out of all proportion to the growth of the real economy. Some would say that that says much more about rent extraction by the financial services sector than a real world story of genuine and proportionate insurance.

When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, many banks were weakened precisely by their exposure to derivatives. In fact, Warren Buffett has described them as financial weapons of mass destruction. They have traded those derivatives at ever-increasing speeds. It is the institutions that are heavily involved in high value, high frequency derivative trading that would feel the biggest impact of the FTT, and whose riskier activities the rest of society has a vested interest in reining in. That is precisely the point that my hon. Friend the shadow Minister made. The public want to see these activities curtailed to reasonable levels such that they reflect the genuine risks of economic growth.

It was Avinash Persaud, the former J.P. Morgan and UBS executive, who in the Financial Times recently commented:

“this small tax on churning would limit some of these activities and help to refocus the financial system on to its purpose of the safe financing of real economic activity.”

That is a good thing and we should be open to the idea of exploring it with our colleagues across the water.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making some strong points. Does he recall Lord Turner describing some of the activities to which he is referring as “socially useless capitalism”?

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The public want politicians to get back to focusing on the real productive economy. They are bewildered, frankly, by the spin-off of derivatives. I was on the floor of the New York stock exchange when it all went belly up on 24 September 2008, and I remember discussing what all the turmoil was about with members of the Senate Banking Committee in Washington a couple of days later. When I returned to the UK, it was clear that people could not understand how things had become so far divorced from reality.

The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who is unfortunately no longer in her place, made the point that an FTT on derivatives might hit pensioners. I do not think that is a convincing argument. Pension funds are obviously vital to our economy, and they buy derivatives to insure against the risk of poor performance by their portfolio, but those funds are much more likely to hold their derivatives until they reach maturity, which means that they would have to pay only a tiny amount under an FTT because their trades are far fewer—the very opposite of the type of short-term, superfast trading that grew in the run-up to the crisis. Most of the burden of paying the FTT would fall on superfast traders and speculative exchanges, which are very far removed from the real economy.

I want to introduce another note into the debate before sitting down. Our Government, along with many other participants in the United Nations framework convention on climate change, have stated that there will be a green climate fund. That fund will have to raise $100 billion each year by 2020—that is the minimum that the UK and our European negotiating partners think will be necessary to help developing countries increase their own economies, reduce poverty and offset the impact of dangerous climate change. The FTT would be an extraordinarily adept mechanism for raising those funds, which are vital to real growth in our economy. If we look at the UK economy, we will find that only 6% relates to the green economy, yet that 6% provided 30% of our economic growth in 2011. I would like to see the funds from the FTT predicated to use in the green climate fund.