Eurozone Crisis

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend and I have discussed this matter before, and we disagree. What the Foreign Secretary said at the time—I remember because I was his speechwriter—[Interruption.] And there were some very good speeches at the time.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Didn’t he write any of his own speeches?

[Mr Osborne]

They were all written by him.

The Foreign Secretary described the euro as a

“burning building with no exits”.

That was his point. As I said, the break-up of the euro, disorderly or otherwise, this autumn or in the foreseeable future, would cause enormous instability to the entire global economy and do enormous damage to the British economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The Chancellor is absolutely right to say that a disorderly break-up of the euro would be a disaster, but given that the euro is going to break up, should we not take the advice of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and organise an orderly break up of the euro?

[Chris Bryant]

That was not my advice.

[Mr Osborne]

I do not think that the orderly break-up of the euro, even if it were desirable, which I am not saying it would be, could be done in a way that would not lead to a pretty disorderly impact on financial markets and the British economy.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is a very naughty boy and I shall see him afterwards.

Basically, Greece lied about its finances and Italy is probably still lying about its finances. It would have helped enormously had there been independent proper auditing of those countries’ finances. Many people opposed that when it was proposed, but surely we should be advocating it now. The danger for the Government is that it might apply to all 27 countries, not just the 17 eurozone members.

[Mr Osborne]

Indeed. The statement talked about independent auditing of finance and independent growth figures on which to base fiscal projections, which is precisely what we have introduced in this country through the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility. That will ensure that we do not get political pressure to alter the growth forecast of the type that the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), detailed in his recent autobiography.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Osborne]

I will have to thumb through the index of Peter Oborne’s book, “Guilty Men”, to see whether there is a reference to the hon. Gentleman. I will concede that there are a few references to some of my colleagues in that book, but I have a good alibi, which is that I was writing speeches for the Foreign Secretary at the time, making it clear what some of the problems were with the euro, and some of those problems have come to pass.

[Chris Bryant]

Who wrote the speeches?

[Mr Osborne]

As the Foreign Secretary used to say at the time, he wrote his own speeches, and I write my speeches today—and those who have written my speeches before me have got themselves into the House of Commons, which is a good thing.

The serious point that I would make to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) is this. I completely reject his idea that Britain has been marginalised. We have actually insisted that such matters be discussed at the European Council and ECOFIN. A key component of today’s agreement is the banking package, which is the area where there is most detail. There was a 10-hour negotiation to achieve the banking package last Saturday which Britain was right at the heart of, so we are at the centre of things. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me that his party’s Front-Bench policy to marginalise us from the IMF would also see us leaving that key negotiating table.