Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Brian Binley Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Malcolm Bruce]

I am aware that some people employed by Royal Mail have argued that they are not in favour of that, but they include people who are involved in the downfall of Royal Mail, too. We have to undertake a consultation, and let those people make a judgment. Royal Mail needs capital, without which it cannot survive and compete. It is a good idea to give the employees a real stake in a reinvested and reinvigorated Royal Mail. I hope that when many of them see what has been proposed they will welcome it as a positive.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that the real need for Royal Mail is to get an injection of management skills, which is what the proposals will create?

[Malcolm Bruce]

Good management and good industrial relations are something that Royal Mail needs. Perhaps we all need to pull together a little bit to make that happen, but reinvigorating the organisation financially is part of the process.

I had some reservations and concerns about the proposal to freeze council tax, although my fears have been substantially allayed by what the Chancellor said. We have had a freezing of council tax in Scotland under the Scottish National party Administration, and I believe that it is a populist but extremely regressive development, because it effectively weakens local authority control and accountability and strengthens the centre.

The tone of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s explanation of the measure allayed many of my fears. He said, first, “for one year” and, secondly, “based on incentives and encouragement, rather than imposition”. However, I hope that the measure will be set against a background whereby we think again—this is in the coalition agreement—about how we finance local authorities in a way that not only makes them locally controlled and accountable, but reduces the intervention of central management and control. I repeat that, although freezing council tax in Scotland is popular because people do not have to pay for an increase, people realise over time that their local council does not have the flexibility to fund some of the services that they want. People have certainly said to me, “We’d rather pay a little bit more council tax and have more investment in our schools,” or roads, or whatever it may be, so it is not the right long-term way in which to operate local government finance.

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[Mr Redwood]

I am very strongly of the view that countries have to do that, and more, in euroland. As Members might guess, I am passionately of the view that that has nothing to do with Britain. The deal I want my right hon. Friends to offer our European partners is that we will accept more or less any kind of treaty change to give them proper control over the budgets of euroland as long as we get some powers back and it is made very clear that we are not part of this new machine to try to create an economic Government of Europe.

There need to be changes. The system is not at all stable, and I do not think that the much advertised trillion dollar package of loans and guarantees, and possible facilities, is necessarily going to see all these countries through the future threats to their stability. Given the rather damaged states of their private sector economies in many cases, there is a danger that, if all they do in response to the financial market pressures is to cut public spending to try to get their borrowing down, they will not succeed. If they are cutting their public spending, but there is no growth coming through in the private sector to take up the slack, or if they are cutting their public spending while their tax revenues are falling, the gloomy pundits will be right and the medicine will not work. Just cutting expenditure does not create a strong economy.

It is important to cut spending sufficiently to allow the private sector to grow and it is important to cut spending sufficiently so that the deficit does not get out of control and produce too much pressure on interest rates, but that needs to be done against the background of the beginning of a recovery—as we have in the United Kingdom. For a country in turmoil with a deeply damaged economy, as some of the southern states seem to have, simply cutting expenditure might make the problem worse, not better, without taking other action to try to get the economy’s private sector going.

The proof of the Budget will be in what happens to the private sector recovery over the next year or so. I hope that the Office for Budget Responsibility will turn out to have been too gloomy. It says that the impact of the Budget in the first two years will be to lower the growth rate slightly; it says the growth rate will be better in the following years when the full benefits of deficit reduction and private enterprise promotion kick in.

It need not be like that; we could do better than that. If the Chancellor wishes to do better than that, as I trust he does, he needs to turn his attention urgently to the state of the British banking industry and the capability of British banks to finance the private sector-led recovery that we clearly need. I do not believe that the current regulators of the British banks have got it right, and although I fully support centralising the regulation of money markets and banks in the Bank of England—I advocated it myself and I am happy that that is going to be done—that in itself is not enough. That is a structural change, but what we also need is an attitude change.

The sad truth of life is that we have just lived through the worst five years I have ever seen in terms of mismanagement of money and banking in this country. Labour Members will want to blame just the private sector banks, and I agree that some directors of those banks got it horribly wrong and they deserve to be dealt with in the appropriate way by their shareholders and by others. However, I hope that sensible Opposition Members would agree with me that it does not speak well of the monetary control system and the regulatory system that that happened. Why do we have financial regulators? We have them to stop that kind of thing happening. They are meant to stop runs on banks, even if banks have directors who are likely to produce a run. They are meant to stop systemic collapse, even if directors get a bit carried away.

[Mr Binley]

Is it not right to point out to the Opposition that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), asked the Financial Services Authority to apply a light touch in order to sustain his myth that he had done away with bust? Is that not one of the reasons that Labour Members should apologise?

[Mr Redwood]

If one interprets light touch as meaning regulating the wrong things, I would agree with my hon. Friend. There was a huge increase in the amount of regulation during the Labour years, as one would expect, as Labour Members believe in regulation, but I think that they have demonstrated that it does not work. Our old friend the box ticker is relevant. There were many more box tickers in the City at the end of the Labour period than at the beginning: lots of nice, neat forms were duly filed; and people got into trouble if they put the wrong figure in the wrong box, which was apparently a great crime.

Meanwhile, the regulators simply ignored the phenomenal explosion of the banks’ balance sheets. I do not mean just hedge funds or off-balance-sheet items; the actual balance sheets ballooned in a crazy and unreal way. As I recall, the main banks went from 20 times to 34 times leverage, and not once did the regulators ask, “What is going on here? Is this not a bit excessive?” Why did the banks have only 20 times leverage in Lady Thatcher’s day? She was not known for being too shy about promoting private sector recovery. Perhaps there was a reason why banks were only allowed to gear that much in those days, and perhaps we should think again about the degree of gearing.

We then lurched from that to the opposite position. At the depth of the recession the regulators said, “We have now decided that the banks must get rid of all this leverage. They must have huge amounts of cash and capital pumped into them so that they cannot lend anything to anyone.” That made the recession 10 times worse.

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[Chris Leslie]

Absolutely, and the local and regional impact of many of the announcements will become clear over the next few days. It is very difficult to assess the full extent of the impact on our constituents only a matter of hours after the Budget has been delivered, but I shall pick out some of the most pernicious measures announced. Putting up VAT to 20% is undoubtedly one of the most regressive tax decisions ever made by a Government in this country—20% indirect taxation, hitting those people who need to buy some of life’s necessities. Yes, indeed, some things may still be zero-rated, although people should watch this space on that one, because the Liberal Democrats in particular promised that they had no plans to increase VAT—that was a secret tax bombshell—but they then introduced a tax bombshell of that scale.

[Mr Binley]

In a sense of maturity, will the hon. Gentleman tell me by how much he thinks that the Labour party would have increased VAT if it had still been in government?

[Chris Leslie]

I suspect that it would be far preferable to follow a progressive route, not a regressive one, if taxation needed to be increased.

[Mr Binley]

Answer the question.

[Chris Leslie]

I am answering the hon. Gentleman’s question. There are significant revenue-generating measures, particularly in respect of the wealthiest in society, that should have been taken. The fact is that he will vote to take £12 billion in VAT—three letters that will be tattooed for ever on to the face of his constituency—annually from people, including his constituents, yet the Government have only managed to take £1 billion in revenue from the banking levy. That ratio says it all.