Bank of England

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Fiscal policy is the responsibility of the elected Government and the House of Commons, but I would say that all the business organisations have supported our plan to deal with the deficit because they know how important it is to securing low interest rates and stability. Frankly, I have yet to hear what the current alternative is from the Labour party. I will save this for next week, but the Opposition used to have a five-point plan and I have no idea whether they are still committed to it. They claim that they want to be responsible with the deficit, but they have absolutely no plans to cut the deficit. I am just getting warmed up for next week, but we will wait a week to have those arguments.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Will the Chancellor and the new Governor examine the possibility of bringing in depositor preference with a view to reducing the risk of bail-outs and nationalisations of UK banks in future?

[Mr Osborne]

Depositor preference does not exist in the UK, but it does exist in countries such as the United States and Switzerland. It is something that we are planning to introduce and it was one of the recommendations of the Vickers commission.