Chuka Umunna
Main Page: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)Department Debates - View all Chuka Umunna's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes with concern that the recent Bank of England publication, Trends in Lending, shows that net lending to businesses has fallen in nine out of the last 12 months and by more than £10 billion in the last year; further notes that a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills report published on 2 February 2012 states that the stock of lending to small and medium-sized enterprises peaked in 2009 and in November 2011 declined by 6.1 per cent. compared to November 2010, whilst banks were frequently setting bonuses for their senior executives which were too large; believes that bank executive remuneration should be related to performance and that banks either directly or indirectly supported by the taxpayer must recognise that the taxpayer expects very large bonuses only to be paid to reflect genuine exceptional performance; notes with concern that the Government has not given due consideration to repeating the bankers’ bonus tax, in addition to the bank levy, to pay for 100,000 jobs for young people; calls on the Government to increase transparency, accountability and responsibility in the setting of pay in the banking sector, including through the immediate implementation of the Walker Review on corporate governance, and the placing of an employee representative on the remuneration committees of company boards; and further calls on the Government to reform the banking sector so that it better supports businesses and provides the credit they need to create jobs and growth.
I should like to take this opportunity to tell the House that I have been informed that the Business Secretary is not able to be here today because he is at a funeral. I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in wishing him well on this sad day.
The subject of the motion, responsibility and reform in the banking sector and in the wider economy, has been a matter of immense public interest of late and is one on which many Members have already spoken out. Let us be clear—I think I speak for most Members when I say this—that in speaking out on these issues hon. Members simply reflect the strong views expressed by our constituents on the subject.
The Labour party’s starting point is this: we are proud of our financial services centre, the City of London being arguably the world’s leading financial services centre. I, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who will make the Opposition’s winding-up speech, and many other Members are, I know, proud to have spent time working in the City of London before being elected to this place.
The City helps to give the country a competitive edge, thanks to the talent that we have here, our time zone, our company law, our jurisdiction and the free flow of capital in London. The financial services sector as a whole employs more than 1 million people nationally and makes up 10% of our total national income, but no witness to recent history could claim with credibility that the sector has functioned as British businesses, our economy and our society as a whole would have wanted over the past few years.
Ultimately, the fault for that lies with a minority of those working in the sector, but as the party in government through much of that period we, along with others in power throughout the world, must, and we do, accept with humility that we should have better regulated the sector, because dysfunction in the banking sector here and globally led to the financial crisis of 2008-09, to the recession that followed and to its aftermath. That recession, the gestation of which is found in the banking sector, is something for which the British people are still paying.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will be aware that the current structures were set up following the closure of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International 20 years ago. There remain within the Treasury the confidential parts of the Bingham report. Does he think that it is time that those confidential parts were published? That would give us a better understanding of exactly what went wrong in the biggest collapse of a bank in British history.
Mr Umunna
I agree with my right hon. Friend. I know that that is something for which he has campaigned for a long time.
We all know the facts. From the middle of 2007, the losses sustained on securities backed by sub-prime mortgage assets led to a credit crunch. That credit crunch came about due to a loss of counterparty confidence and uncertainty about which financial institutions held toxic assets. Depressed asset prices and increased losses led to serious solvency issues in major banks here and in the United States.
In the US, Bear Stearns had to be rescued by J. P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and AIG was nationalised in 2008 by that well known socialist, the 43rd President of the United States, George Bush. Here, Northern Rock had already been nationalised by the Labour Government by 2008. Later that year, we put in place a £500 billion package of measures designed to recapitalise the banks. That included the special liquidity scheme and inter-bank lending guarantees. The Labour Government took stakes in two of our biggest banks so that, by the end of 2009, the Government held a stake in Lloyds of just over 40% and a stake in RBS that increased to more than 80%.
For all the criticism that is often heaped on my right hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) and for Kircaldidy—sorry, for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)—by Government Members, I believe that we owe a debt of gratitude to them both for the decisive action that they took to save the system from itself, to secure people’s savings and to ensure that the people we represent could continue to withdraw money from cash machines in the wall. The Opposition are proud of what they achieved.
As the Independent Commission on Banking stated:
“without the intervention of national authorities around the world—requiring taxpayers to incur significant direct costs and larger contingent liabilities—the consequences of the crisis would have been immeasurably worse.”
It is for that reason that this House has every right to take an interest in remuneration and reform in the banking sector. After all, our banks still benefit from an implicit taxpayer subsidy if they fail.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
The Financial Services Authority blamed political pressure for the failure of RBS. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the FSA is wrong?
Mr Umunna
I do not believe that that is what the report on RBS said. I did concede earlier that the Opposition accept that, in office, we should have better regulated the sector. I also think that Government Members who urged us towards a light-touch regulatory regime should accept that they, too, were mistaken.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree with me and some of my constituents who have been in touch that the one thing that is lacking in the current crisis is leadership? That was not the case a few years ago when my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) led the way.
Mr Umunna
I agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for correcting my pronunciation of the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.
It is worth taking our minds back to the months leading up to April 2009, when the former Prime Minister went around the world galvanising support and encouraging people to attend the summit. It is worth noting that President Obama of the United States was not planning to attend the G20 conference in London, but in the end many people came here and the conference achieved great things and helped to secure the system. That was, indeed, leadership.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is telling the House about the record of the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). Does he think the previous Prime Minister showed good leadership by recommending Fred Goodwin for a knighthood and giving him a £700,000 pension?
Mr Umunna
We have said that, if we had known then what we know now, we would not have knighted Fred Goodwin. However, I say to the hon. Gentleman that the future of the banking sector is bigger than the individuals who have featured in the headlines of late. It is important that we debate what happens in the sector as a whole rather than focusing on Fred Goodwin and other individuals, important though it is to make points about them.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
As we are examining history—some Government Members do not like to hear accurate history—I point out that Lord Burns was the Chairman and I was the deputy Chairman of the pre-legislative Joint Committee that considered the financial services Act. I remember that very clearly indeed, because it took us many months and was the first time there had been a joint Lords-Commons pre-legislative inquiry. The context was bitter resentment from the banks, which tried to water down the Bill, and no help from the people who led the Conservative party.
Mr Umunna
I presume that my hon. Friend is referring to the Joint Committee that considered the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. The consensus at the time was shown in the approach instilled in the Act, and we are now revisiting the regulation of the sector.
The crash was global in nature, and the causes cited by the Independent Commission on Banking include declining underwriting standards, the mispricing of risk, a vast expansion of banks’ balance sheets and rapid growth in securitised assets—in short, gross irresponsibility. The commission also stated in its report that one problem was that some bank employees were remunerated
“on the basis of reported profits that were neither time-adjusted nor risk-adjusted, and led to employee incentives that were not always aligned with the long-term interests of the bank.”
The US financial crisis inquiry commission established by President Obama, which reported last year, went further, stating:
“Compensation systems—designed in an environment of cheap money, intense competition, and light regulation—too often rewarded the quick deal, the short-term gain—without proper consideration of long-term consequences. Often, those systems encouraged the big bet—where the payoff on the upside could be huge and the downside limited.”
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we should not demonise one group in society, whether they be bankers or benefit claimants? This is about fairness. We know from recent evidence that fairer societies are better for everybody, improving life expectancy and increasing social mobility. We should use that evidence to inform policy that is principally about fairness.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
The Conservatives always tried to rewrite history when they were in opposition, but the truth is coming out now. Even Polly Toynbee, who was the biggest critic of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), has now forgiven him and wishes he were back.
More importantly, if the man or woman in the street who goes to work every day fails in their job, they get the sack. No one but a banker would ever be rewarded for failure, but we now have a culture in this country of rewarding failure. Surely that must be wrong.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
Will the shadow Minister confirm that at that time he was an employment lawyer and was involved in structuring the compensation packages of investment houses? Does he have any regrets about how he behaved at the time?
Mr Umunna
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman brought up that point, because I anticipated it. First, I think it is good that Members of this House have experience in working for business. Secondly, my experience of advising different companies and financial institutions on such arrangements has convinced me that we must reform the way in which the system works—[Interruption.] I would also say to Ministers, who are crowing, that they might wish to reflect on the fact that my ultimate boss at the time when I was more deeply involved in drafting such arrangements was the senior partner of Herbert Smith, whom the Prime Minister ennobled in the first tranche of peers at the beginning of this Parliament—no doubt because of his services to the legal profession and the City of London.
As the Leader of the Opposition said last week, we are still dealing with the aftermath of the moment to which I have referred and the recession it caused. Many thousands of people lost their jobs and now face the biggest squeeze on their living standards in a generation. Thousands of robust, profitable businesses have struggled to access finance or have gone under. At this juncture, I want to tackle head on the accusation that to raise those issues and criticise the financial services sector is to be anti-business—some have even referred to it as indiscriminate business bashing. That is an utterly absurd notion given that among the most vociferous critics of our banks are the small and medium-sized businesses that make up the overwhelming majority of businesses in this country. The people making those outlandish claims of anti-business sentiment talk as though large financial institutions are the only businesses in this country. Yes, those institutions are an important part of our business community, but there is so much more to British business than big finance. Indeed, we need to rebalance our economy not to diminish our competitive edge in financial services but to grow other sectors so that we are not so reliant on that one sector.
Businesses in other sectors are struggling right now. The most recent Bank of England trends in lending show that net lending to businesses has fallen in nine out of the past 12 months and lending has fallen by more than £10 billion in the past year. A report published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills last week states that the stock of lending to small and medium-sized businesses declined by 6.1% in November 2011 compared with a year earlier.
It is not just that the banks are failing to get the money out of the door to successful, profitable businesses with robust business models. There has been a move away from relationship banking, where banks saw it as their duty to get to know and understand their business customers properly. Yesterday, I met a number of successful export businesses in the home counties—businesses that help us pay our way in the world. I was told by the overwhelming majority that when it came to getting help from their banks to export and expand, their banks simply did not want to know.
Some have suggested that that is all the result of increased capital requirements on the banks, but Robert Jenkins, a member of the Bank of England’s interim Financial Policy Committee, told the Treasury Committee last month:
“Making the banks safer through greater resilience in their balance sheets and more capital does not, in and of itself, prevent additional lending.”
Despite all that, people and businesses have had to watch as billions in bonuses have been paid to bankers since 2008-09. It is worth stating that we are not talking about the sums earned by the average bank employee—the cashier, say, in a local branch—but about the enormous sums paid to investment bankers and a select few senior executives in the sector. Those bonuses have continued to be paid as a matter of course, regardless of the fact that many of the institutions, all of which directly or indirectly benefited from the interventions of the Government over the past five years and continue to benefit from an implicit subsidy, have been making thousands redundant, have seen their share prices and profits falling and have been found guilty of mis-selling payment protection insurance on a grand scale. To add insult to injury, Robert Jenkins, commenting on bank balance sheets, told the Treasury Committee:
“Every £1 billion of less bonus would support £20 billion of additional small business lending.”
It is no wonder that Sir Philip Hampton, the chair of RBS, himself said last week:
“Pay has been high for too long, particularly in the banks, particularly in the investment banks".
Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend also accept that lower-paid staff in banks often took much of their bonuses in the form of shares? Not only have they lost their jobs, many have lost out in their pension savings.
Mr Umunna
My right hon. Friend makes a good point. We should, of course, spare a thought for the employees whom she mentions.
It matters because, as the Governor of the Bank of England said last month, people have seen an extraordinary squeeze in their living standards, but the institutions and bankers at the centre of the crisis that created those problems are not only not suffering a gigantic squeeze on their living standards but continue to get very high remuneration, in part because the taxpayer has been forced to step in and bail them out.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Can the hon. Gentleman explain why, under the regulatory structure introduced by his Government, banks were able to hire staff on guaranteed bonuses totally unconnected with future performance, and why not a single individual in any of the five largest banks was subject to a fine? The two largest fines imposed on Northern Rock executives were less than the bonuses that they had received the preceding year.
Mr Umunna
On guaranteed bonuses, there is an element of contract in that, in terms of the arrangements between individual banks—[Interruption.] Will the hon. Gentleman listen and let me finish the point? There is an element of contract that provides for a bonus, but also an element of discretion. The fact that large bonuses were being paid out regardless of performance is, of course, what people outside Parliament object to.
Julian Smith
In order to create a balanced view, will the shadow business Minister confirm the tens of billions of pounds paid from those bonuses in income taxes and other taxes, such as employment taxes, during the period he is discussing?
Mr Umunna
Ultimately, the taxpayer had to put about £1.2 trillion into the system to support it. Juxtaposing that with the amount paid in tax by the sector, I am not sure that it comes to the same sum. I get the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. I do not deny that the financial services sector has contributed in tax receipts, but that is not outweighed by what we have had to pay out to save it from itself.
The status quo will not do. Change is essential. In November last year, Bob Diamond, chief executive of Barclays, said in his BBC “Today” business lecture that
“the single most important thing for banks and for businesses now is to focus on helping to create jobs and economic growth; and being able to do that requires us—banks in particular—to rebuild the trust that has been decimated by events of the past three years; and that rebuilding trust requires banks to be better citizens.”
I agree with Mr Diamond, but actions matter far more than words to people and businesses.
At the Business Secretary’s instigation, the Government established the Independent Commission on Banking, for which he deserves credit. If its recommendations are implemented, they will help to deliver a banking system that supports our economy’s interests in the long term. However, a number of things must happen to address the issues in the short term, not least of which is the matter of remuneration, which can be corrosive of public trust in our banks.
First, greater transparency on pay in the banking sector is needed. A good place to start would be immediate implementation of the Walker review. In 2009, Sir David Walker recommended new rules on the disclosure of bankers’ remuneration within pay bands above £1 million. In government, we legislated for that fairly modest scheme to be put in place so that irresponsible remuneration practices could be identified and rooted out. So modest were the proposals that the now Business Secretary told the House at the time that Sir David had produced
“an embarrassing mouse of a report”.—[Official Report, 30 November 2009; Vol. 501, c. 900.]
In the June 2010 Budget, the Business Secretary and his coalition partners pledged to take forward these modest proposals, but in November 2010 the Chancellor suddenly declared that he would not countenance implementation unless he could secure international agreement for the measures. In giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee in December 2010, however, RBS’s Stephen Hester indicated that unilateral adoption of the Walker review proposals would not put the UK financial services sector at a significant disadvantage. Given the modesty of the Walker review proposals, why on earth will the Government not implement them?
Secondly, to increase accountability, we have said that an ordinary worker should be placed on the company remuneration committees setting pay. I do not understand why the Government have been so resistant to this idea. The Business Secretary has said that he is very sympathetic to the idea but has raised practical objections on the basis that there are many FTSE companies whose employees are predominantly overseas. These practical obstacles can be overcome, however, not least through technologies such as telephone and video conferencing, which in this day and age are a common feature of board meetings.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
Having a worker on the board is not just about accountability. Would it not also address the fact that remuneration committees tend to comprise people much like the people whose salaries and bonuses they are assessing? It is not surprising, therefore, that they decide in favour of higher bonuses and salaries. That is another reason a different voice is needed on the committees.
Mr Umunna
I agree with my hon. Friend. First, an employee understands what is going on in the business—perhaps, in some respects, better than a non-executive director—and, secondly, employees have a stake in the business, and if the business fails, they ultimately pay the price, as thousands of RBS employees going through the redundancy process are now realising.
Mr Sheerman
I am certainly not against this sensible proposal to put employees on boards, but as I understand the Walker review and its recommendations, it does not meet the situation now. Instead of innovations, we need something so dramatic that we change the culture in our banking system and its understanding of what is right and wrong, as was mentioned earlier. The culture is what matters, but I see nothing coming from the Government that will fundamentally change the culture that motivates the people working in the sector.
Mr Umunna
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. The Walker review proposals are the start, not the end, of the reform needed, but my hon. Friend makes a strong point about the culture in the financial services sector. On the proposal to have an employee on the remuneration committee, would not the RBS board be in a stronger position if it could say, on matters of pay, that an employee representative had been involved in the decision making?
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
I am listening with great interest to the hon. Gentleman’s extended exposition on the failings of the previous Labour Government. It is nice to see him joined by so many for such an extended mea culpa. [Hon. Members: “Where’s the question?”] My question is this: does he think that the objectives of a company executive should be to maximise shareholder value for his business, to do the Government’s bidding or to do the bidding of a broader range of interests?
Mr Umunna
The hon. Gentleman asks a good question. Ultimately, of course, a director’s duty is to shareholders, but I take issue with those who suggest that the Labour Government did not introduce reforms, because we did introduce reforms, one of which was the Companies Act 2006, which changed the nature of company law so that other stakeholder interests could be accounted for. In some respects, though, shareholder interests are not necessarily completely separate from those of wider society. My strong view is that business and society are mutually dependent, and that goes for our banks as well. Banks rely on society to provide talent, skills and custom, and we rely on banks not only to perform a social utility function for individuals and businesses, but to provide growth and jobs. How does that relate to the hon. Gentleman’s point about shareholder value? If a bank fails its customers—as happened, for example, in the payment protection insurance scandal—that has a knock-on impact on reputation, which can ultimately have a knock-on impact on profit, which is against the shareholder interest.
Mr Umunna
I will move on, so that I can finish and others can get in.
What else needs to happen? The banks are accountable to their shareholders, and the Government have told shareholders to be more active. A starting point should be for the Government to practise what they preach in relation to their shareholdings in the publicly owned banks, particularly in the setting of pay and bonuses. It seems that their default position at the moment is that they do not want to get involved unless forced to do so. That has to change. More responsibility is needed. The public rightly expect the culture of excessive bonuses to stop. That means that bank executive remuneration that is described as performance-related should be just that: related to performance. Very large bonuses should be paid only to reflect genuinely exceptional performance, if trust in the system is to be maintained. The public expect the same of other organisations enjoying taxpayer subsidies. Network Rail—part of an industry backed by a £4 billion taxpayer subsidy—is a good example. It was planning to push through a new bonus scheme under which senior managers were due to receive 60% of their salaries as a bonus every year, and a further 500% at the end of each five-year funding period. That kind of bonus culture is unacceptable to people and difficult to fathom. Again, the Government did little to stop that, but in the end the Network Rail board saw sense.
Mark Lazarowicz
My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. When bonuses are paid for performance, is it not also important that they should be paid for performance that is related to the activities of the people receiving them? They should not be bonuses that could depend on factors that have nothing to do with the activities of the directors concerned, as would have been the case with Network Rail.
Mr Umunna
I will move on.
Given that market mechanisms since the crash have not operated to rein in excessive pay in the banking sector, the bank bonus tax, we have argued, should be repeated, on top of the bank levy, in recognition of the fact that the banking sector owes a responsibility to society in general. If the claim that we are all in it together is to mean anything, the reintroduction of that tax is a must. It would create 100,000 youth jobs and 25,000 affordable homes. It would do immeasurable good to the reputation of the sector and support jobs, growth and business in the UK economy.
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
I agree with some of the things that the hon. Gentleman has said, but the last Labour Chancellor said that
“it will be a one-off thing because, frankly, the very people you are after here are very good at getting out of these things”.
Those were the words of the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) in autumn 2010. What has changed since?
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
With house building down, homelessness up and nearly 2 million people on waiting lists for council housing, does my hon. Friend agree with the unemployed building worker in Erdington who said to me that the time has come to tax the bankers, build homes, put people such as him back to work, and create apprenticeships and hope for our young people?
Mr Umunna
I want to make a little more progress.
We need a more diverse and competitive banking system that is rooted in our communities and that better serves the financing needs of our businesses, as the Federation of Small Businesses and other organisations have argued. We need better developed equity finance, too, which is why we are exploring the possibility of creating in the UK something akin to the US Government’s small business investment company programme. That programme financed the likes of Apple and Intel in their early stages. We are also considering plans to set up a British investment bank that could step in if the market failed to provide for our entrepreneurs.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
We all appreciate that this banking crisis has gone on considerably longer than we envisaged. In 2008, we probably all thought that we would have divested ourselves of our huge stake in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group by now. I therefore fully support the idea of a structure for bonuses that would come into play only when we have divested ourselves of our stake in those two banks. However, I get the impression from all that the hon. Gentleman has said that he draws no distinction between those two banks, in which we have large holdings, and the rest of the banking sector. Am I correct in that assumption?
Mr Umunna
No; partly because, whether we like it or not, the way in which the public regard RBS and Lloyds is different from the way in which they regard, say, Barclays or other banking groups, simply because of the public stake in them. That is the issue that crept up on members of the RBS board over the past couple of weeks. For all that was said about the terms on which the different executives and employees were joining RBS, they were essentially joining an institution that the public have very much come to regard as a public entity.
Mark Field
Is the hon. Gentleman therefore working towards putting in place a policy that would be more onerous for RBS and Lloyds Banking Group, in which the public have a large stake, than for the rest of the banking system? Does he feel that that would be a sensible way to go forward?
Mr Umunna
That is not actually what we are arguing for. We have said, given that the Government have been lecturing shareholders on being more active in relation to their shareholdings, that the Government should of course take a more active approach to those banks in which we have a stake. As has been pointed out, however, the sector as a whole needs a change in its culture; that applies across the board.
Right now, we need the Government to make good on their promise to implement credit easing, to relieve the credit squeeze on businesses. That plan was announced to great fanfare more than four months ago, but nothing has happened. I am glad that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) will be responding to this debate. Perhaps he can tell us what has become of the scheme. The lack of speed with which the Government have proceeded with it is in marked contrast to the actions of the German and US Governments, for example. In Germany, KFW doubled the amount of small business finance available very quickly over the past couple of years through its lending programmes.
Some people suggest that if we do all these things, wealthy bankers will simply move abroad. We are for ever being held to ransom by that threat. It is notable, however, that many of those who put that argument benefit from the status quo. They have been making the argument for a number of years, but they are still here. They tend to ignore the fact that it is the banks’ shareholders—not just politicians and society at large—who are calling for reform. Shareholders such as Jupiter, F&C Asset Management and Legal & General have all reportedly told the banks to be sensitive to the popular mood, and to moderate pay rises to match sharp falls in shareholder returns. The Association of British Insurers is reportedly meeting all the banks at the moment, including Barclays. Those people also ignore the fact that bankers and executives in other countries are being required to change their ways. For example, our banks’ US rivals are cutting bonuses by up to 30% at the moment.
Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)
Where would those chief executives go? In Europe, they would get a lot less, and in America some chief executives have gone to court and even to prison. Perhaps they want to stay where they are because they feel safe here.
Mr Umunna
I am sure that many of those executives are watching the debate, and that they will pay attention to what my hon. Friend has said.
I will finish by returning to where I started. We are proud of our financial sector; it is an asset. We need it to help create the jobs and growth that are so lacking at present. All we ask is that it better serve the real economy in this endeavour—and that it does so more responsibly. With that in mind, I urge all Members to support our motion.
Mr Hoban
The reason we have to have the austerity programme in place is to tackle the mess left by the Labour party when it was in government.
As I was saying, we are seeking to reform the sector to ensure that it can lend to businesses in the long term, but we have also taken decisive action to stimulate credit in the short term. That is why the Government secured an agreement with the UK’s largest banks to provide £190 billion of new lending to business in 2011. By the third quarter of last year, those banks had loaned more than £157 billion to UK businesses, which is 11% above their implied target. That includes £56 billion of lending to small and medium-sized enterprises—10% higher than at the same point in 2010.
I noted that during the rather long speech of the shadow Business Secretary, he talked about lending but put forward no ideas about how Labour would tackle it, yet we in government have taken action to get the banks lending to businesses and to make sure that there is a supply of creditors to SMEs.
Mr Umunna
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I have to say that many of the organisations that represent our SMEs will listen with incredulity to the Minister’s suggestion that credit conditions are somehow all fine and that all is well. The fact is that, according to the Bank of England’s latest figures, we have seen a net contraction in lending to SMEs in nine of the last 12 months. It is clearly still a problem. In fairness, the Government announced that they were going to provide some credit easing—admittedly when the Chancellor said so in his speech to the Conservative party conference, although I never quite understood what he was talking about—but so far we have seen absolutely no action. When will this credit easing system come into effect?
Mr Hoban
I had hoped that the hon. Gentleman would come up with some ideas, yet he took a rather lengthy intervention to demonstrate that Labour has no ideas about what to do. Let me set out some of the structural measures we are taking to tackle the supply of debt and equity finance to businesses, and SMEs in particular. We are continuing the enterprise capital funds, and we are simplifying and refocusing the venture capital trusts and enterprise investment scheme to encourage more equity investment in start-ups.
Mr Umunna
Will the Minister at least concede that this issue and the kind of perverse incentive structures we have heard about, with rewards for failure and excessive pay in the boardroom and the City, have grown over the past three decades under different Governments of different colours? Will he have the humility to accept that?
Stephen Williams
My hon. Friend makes an interesting philosophical point about the whole culture that we have perhaps all grown up in over the past 30 years. It would require more than an eight-minute speech in a three-hour debate to deal seriously with those issues, but I am trying to raise some of them. For instance, when considering how to respond to the outbreak of collective madness on the streets of some of our cities last summer, we should recognise that some of what he says is relevant to the feelings of dislocation and despair that some people felt, but it was also about out-of-control remuneration, lax regulation and complacent political oversight. Opposition Members do not like me saying this, but I say it every time and will say it again: a previous Labour Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson, said that new Labour was intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich. Because of that, we saw the dislocation of director and shareholder interest.
Stephen Williams
No, because I have given way twice and I have a time limit, and the hon. Gentleman took rather a long time making his opening speech.
All of this happened under the previous Government, and the coalition Government are now having to clear up the mess. We have heard once again that all that is needed is the magic wand of the bankers bonus tax but, as my hon. Friend the Minister has pointed out, in every year of this Parliament, under the coalition Government, more money will be raised—£2.6 billion—from the permanent levy on the banks’ balance sheets. It is the behaviour of the banks, and their boards in particular, that needs to change, rather than necessarily the pay and remuneration of their employees, which I remind the House is now taxed at a higher rate than it was when Labour was in government.
The behaviour in the boardroom needs to change, especially in the remuneration committees. As I understand it, the Walker report, which is mentioned in the Opposition’s motion, simply recommended that remuneration of bank employees over £1 million should be disclosed in broad pay bands, which is hardly revolutionary.
The Merlin agreement, an interim measure while we await the implementation of more wide-ranging banking reforms, now states that a bank’s five highest-paid executives, as well as its chief executive and chairman, have to disclose their remuneration, so at least seven people each year now have to do so. That is the highest number in any global financial centre and more than in the United States, and, as the Minister pointed out, bonuses at the banks that are under effective state control, such as Lloyd’s Banking Group and the Royal Bank of Scotland, are limited to £2,000 in cash, with anything beyond that having to be offered on a deferred basis in shares.
My right hon. Friend the Business Secretary has responded to the High Pay Commission with a series of measures that were announced a couple of weeks ago, and central to those is changing the behaviour and composition of the remuneration committees, so that on the forward pay agreements that they recommend for approval they have binding votes: not the advisory votes that were in place under the Labour Government, but binding votes, so that shareholders really are empowered to make a difference and to instruct directors, who are supposed to have stewardship of their investments in those companies.
That will end the revolving door, whereby executives of one company become non-executives and sit on the remuneration committees of another, and whereby inevitably it is in everybody’s interests constantly to bid up pay in each quoted company. Indeed, they will also have to state how they have involved and consulted employees of what, in many cases, are global companies.
Labour, in its manifesto at the most recent general election, said—I had someone check this for me before the debate—that it would
“strengthen the 2006 Companies Act where necessary”.
I remember that legislation, which, along with the Crossrail Bill, was probably the least popular Standing Committee on which a Member could sit, because it was such a fat Bill and its proceedings went on for so long, but there was nothing in it proposing the regulation of corporate pay. Throughout the previous Government’s 13 years in office, they did little to act on that issue, and despite the huge legislative opportunity that they had in 2006 they did not seek to strengthen shareholder power.
The manifesto went on to state that Labour would strengthen the UK stewardship code for institutional investors so that they would have to declare how they vote on remuneration policies, which in turn should be approved by directors. It was silent on the interests of employees, and the shadow Business Secretary did not say much about that this afternoon, either. He certainly did not commit to having an employee on the board of every company.
It is the behaviour of the banks, not just their remuneration policy, that needs to change. One of the first acts of the coalition Government was to set up the Independent Commission on Banking. We have now had the Vickers report, but in our proceedings on the Financial Services Bill, which received its Second Reading last night, we went through all those issues, so I shall not go through them again today.
We also need a change of behaviour at company annual general meetings, whereby shareholders really engage with the power that they have over their companies. Recently I met the charitable group FairPensions, which is urging institutional investors, the pension fund managers who act on behalf of many of us, our constituents and local authorities, to use their power at company meetings in order to control executive pay and to act as responsible investors.
Some hon. Members may have noticed that I tabled early-day motion 2678 last week, supporting the Move Your Money UK campaign. Mr Speaker, you and I are of roughly the same political generation—although from different points on the spectrum. We would first have become involved in politics during the 1980s. So we would have been students at the time of the Boycott Barclays campaign, and indeed I had a Boycott Barclays poster up on my bedroom wall as a student. I suspect that you did not, Mr Speaker, but people of my generation will remember that the behaviour of consumers can make a real difference to the behaviour of companies, so I urge all hon. Members—I hope this is a cross-party issue—to support my early-day motion and to urge all our constituents as consumers to consider the behaviour of companies when they use their purchasing power as well as when they exercise their power as shareholders.
There has been systemic failure for quite some time, as the Opposition Front Bencher at least acknowledged. There was reckless behaviour by Mr Goodwin, but there was reckless behaviour also in the Cabinet room by the last Labour Government. The coalition Government are clearing up the mess. We are putting in place regulations and legislation to control pay policy, to introduce transparency into the implementation of that policy and to regulate the banks so that we have a sustainable financial services sector and sustainable banks, which are so essential to supporting the businesses that are required to grow our economy.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
In opening the debate, the shadow Business Secretary stressed the importance of a strong financial sector and called for a new culture, given the high pay and excessive bonuses that we have seen. Many of us on the Government Benches agreed with what he said in that direction and with the overall tone that he struck. He was asked how much money had been given away in bonuses under the last Government. According to my figures, £66 billion was paid out in bank bonuses under the last Government. Much of that was encouraged by the last Government, for the massive tax revenues that it generated, with more than 50% coming back to the Exchequer.
Much has been made of the linkage between businesses and bank lending, but I would dispute that. We need to see much more lending to small businesses, but, as I explained in an intervention, the reason for the current lending issues is not just that the banks will not lend. Opposition Members do businesses a disservice by continuing to promulgate the myth that banks will not lend, because one reason that businesses are reluctant to approach banks is that they think they will be rejected. We must not engage in too much rhetoric, accusing the banks of not lending, when RBS, for example, grants 85% of the loan applications that it receives from small and medium-sized enterprises.
Mr Umunna
First, I accept that the reason there is not as much lending to SMEs as one would expect is not just because of the banks, but because of people’s confidence in the economy—one might argue that the Government’s policies have had an effect on that. Secondly, I pointedly made it clear in my speech that it is not just a question of the banks not getting the money out of the door to robust, profitable businesses; rather, it is a question of their relationship with their business customers in this day and age. Often, people are put on the phone to some person in a regional office who knows nothing about their business and is therefore not in a position to assess the risk properly.
Margot James
First, on the causes of why businesses are not seeking loans to invest, that has much more to do with the eurozone crisis and the global economy in general. For any company seeking to export, there is a general nervousness across the world—not just in the west, but in China and the far east. Secondly, I agree with the hon. Gentleman about banks losing a lot of skills over the past 10 to 20 years in managing their business customers, but I see signs of change. I visited Barclays in Birmingham a couple of months ago, and I sensed the real commitment, along with an upgrading of skills, that that bank—to name one—is making to its business customers.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)
We have heard 11 interesting contributions from Back Benchers, although I cannot say that the last contribution was either interesting or, indeed, informed. I should begin by drawing the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I have to say that the last contribution was in sharp contrast to the more emollient tones of the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), who actually admitted—I think for the first time from the Dispatch Box—that Labour got it wrong on this issue when it was in government. What is not clear, however, is whether he cleared those remarks with the shadow Chancellor. It seemed that this set of remarks was new to a number of faces on the Back Benches.
We heard very good contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) and excellent contributions, too, from my hon. Friends the Members for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and for Stourbridge (Margot James). We heard an interesting contribution from the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), who pointed out that it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable)—[Interruption]—who, notwithstanding the shouting and screaming from Labour Members, highlighted the existence of real challenges and problems when his party was in opposition. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be happy to acknowledge that.
Let me begin by making it clear that this Government have an absolute commitment to addressing excesses in the banking system that were allowed to go unchecked and unregulated for much of the 13 years before we came to office. It was a system in which light-touch regulation and record bonuses were encouraged by a Government who were keen to reap the rewards. Since coming to office, we, as a coalition Government, have made a return to responsible banking a key priority. We have taken concerted action to ensure that, in return for extensive taxpayer support, banks must once again live up to their obligations to support the wider United Kingdom economy.
That is why, as my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury pointed out, we are discarding the discredited tripartite system and implementing the recommendations of the Vickers commission. It is also why we are actively supporting the flow of lending to businesses, especially small businesses, so that they can gain access to the finance that they need if they are to invest and grow. We on these Benches passionately support the entrepreneurs and hard-working small business owners who create the wealth and jobs on which the rest of us rely.
There has been some discussion about the Merlin agreement this evening. Let us be clear about that. Under the terms of the agreement, the five major UK banks committed themselves to making £190 billion of new credit available last year. Of that new lending capacity, £76 billion was dedicated to small and medium-sized enterprises, which would be a 15% increase on the previous year. The latest figures, for the third quarter, show that the banks are broadly on track. At that point banks had lent more than £157 billion to UK businesses, 11% above their implied target, and three—Barclays, Santander and HSBC—have all made recent statements to the effect that they have met their Merlin targets. We await the final figures, but that is good news that we should bear in mind.
Moreover, a report from my Department, to which the motion refers, reveals—although I did not hear this from Labour Members—that three quarters of SME employers are being given the loan or overdraft they request. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge rightly pointed out that it is wrong to suggest—as some Opposition Members do—that no small firm can obtain a loan.
Mr Prisk
I will not give way. The hon. Gentleman spoke for 45 minutes, which meant that Back Benchers did not have a chance to contribute to the debate.
I understand—we understand—that to the 25% of SME employers who do not obtain that loan or overdraft, the fact that 75% do will be no consolation. That is why the Chancellor is taking decisive action to provide some £21 billion, £20 billion of it under the national loan guarantee scheme, which will be available over two years and will allow banks to offer lower-cost lending to smaller businesses. [Interruption.] Notwithstanding the chuntering of Opposition Members, that scheme is supported by the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Chambers of Commerce and the CBI. The details will be made clear in the next few weeks.