Royal Bank of Scotland

Debate between Douglas Carswell and Baroness Laing of Elderslie

Thursday 5th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

He has only just come in.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. If the hon. Gentleman had only just come in, I would not be calling him to speak. It is very kind of the hon. Lady to offer advice from a sedentary position, but it is not appropriate. I call Mr Carswell.

[Mr Carswell]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing this debate. She spoke incredibly eloquently—well done.

I am afraid that I cannot support the motion as it is far too prescriptive. It presumes to know what shape banks should take in the future. The German regional banking model, of which much has been said, could well be the future, but I am not sure that even Germany will necessarily have a German model of banking in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time. Equally, new technology might mean that we are able to do many of the things that banks currently do using platforms, which do not come with costly bonuses and buildings.

I very much favour the idea in the motion of a new model of banking. Since 2007, there has not been significant reform. Almost nothing has been done to rein in the worst excesses of fractional-reserve banking. It is this ability to conjure credit out of nothing that creates chronic malinvestment and credit bubbles in the wider economy and makes banks intrinsically unstable and in need of bail-outs—incidentally, I have consistently opposed those bail-outs.

In my paper “After Osbrown”—I do not intend to rehearse all the arguments on this occasion—I outlined the new model banking that I wished to see. After the Osbrown monetary and banking consensus has failed, and been seen to have failed, we will need change, but neither nationalising the banking system and the money supply nor imposing grand designs on the nature of banks, regional or mutual, are the answers. Claims that we need more retail banks as they are supposedly a safer bet than investment banks need to be taken with a large pinch of salt given that it was Northern Rock, a retail bank, that failed. I suspect that we will see dramatic change in financial intermediation and in the nature of money itself.

At the heart of the capitalist system is capital allocation, which does not use the pricing mechanism to allocate capital. That inconsistency cannot last much longer. We need fundamental reform to break up cartel banking. We must break up the cosy cartel presided over by central banks. We need to unwind quantitative easing, which is a subsidy for bankers. Thankfully, that will come about not as a result of politicians, House of Commons motions or ministerial insights, but because of technological change. Holding on to RBS shares will do nothing but hold up the changes that technology and market forces need to bring about.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Douglas Carswell and Baroness Laing of Elderslie

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Laing]

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) made a sincere speech in support of her amendment 7, but it was wrong because she argued about giving more power to the people. Her amendment has nothing whatever to do with standards in the House of Commons. It would cause confusion and lead to the loss of the two most important factors that any electoral system ought to depend on—clarity and certainty. They are present in first past the post, but they certainly are not in amendment 7.

[Mr Carswell]

I helped draft the design of the ballot paper under this amendment. Can the hon. Lady explain which bits of it she thinks her constituents would be unable to understand?

[Mrs Laing]

I did not say that my constituents would not be able to understand. My constituents are very intelligent, and I am sure that they would be able to understand. I will not go into a long explanation at this point in the evening. I am merely saying, and I stick to it, that if amendment 7 were to become part of the Bill, the referendum would bring about a system—any of the systems in amendment 7—that would lack clarity and certainty. Any voting system ought to have clarity and certainty.

Clarity is what amendment 230 is all about. I am pleased to say that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, of which I am a member, looked at the report of the Electoral Commission. The commission consulted extensively on the wording of the question, as the Minister has told us this evening. The Select Committee supported the suggestions of the Electoral Commission. The wording in amendment 230 is much clearer. It brings about clarity and certainty when a question is put to the electorate, as it should be. Therefore, members of the Select Committee tabled this amendment. We were delighted to discover that the Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister also supported the amendment, and I hope that the Committee will support it this evening.