Greece

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

We all hope for a resolution in Greece, but clearly it cannot be right to force more cuts and austerity on the Greek people and increase the pain they have already suffered. The Chancellor said in his statement that

“we hope for the best, but we prepare for the worst.”

Could he tell us what “the worst” is for the UK?

[Mr Osborne]

Clearly, we are a large economy that is probably the most interconnected and open of the major economies of the world. We have a very large financial sector, so we are exposed to financial turbulence wherever it occurs in the world, which is all the more reason why we need a proper system of regulation and we have now put the Bank of England in charge of regulation. We also need properly capitalised banks—under that new system of regulation, our banks have been recapitalised—and we need to make sure that we are not carrying a very large budget deficit. We have halved the budget deficit and we will take further steps next week to reduce and eliminate that budget deficit. We are prepared for whatever the world throws at us.