Oral Answers to Questions
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
We want to get small businesses exporting more, and UK small businesses have traditionally not exported as much as, for example, continental European small businesses. That is why UK Trade & Investment, under Lord Green, has set the specific ambition of doubling the number of small businesses helped by the Government. We want small businesses to be ambitious and look to overseas markets.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
The Chancellor has had a difficult few weeks since the Budget. To be told by his own side that he is an out-of-touch posh boy who does not know the price of milk must be particularly hard to take. I will ask him today not about the price of milk but—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Let me say once and for all to the junior Whip, sitting next to a senior Whip: be quiet, do not heckle, and if you cannot keep quiet, leave the Chamber. Make a habit of that.
Ed Balls
Shall I start again at the beginning of the question? I am going to ask the Chancellor today not about the price of milk but about a price that he surely must have considered at Budget time. I will ask him a specific question. What is—[Interruption.] I am going to ask the Chancellor a specific question that he must have considered at Budget time. What is the price of a litre of unleaded petrol at the pumps today, and what was it on Budget day a year ago?
Mr Osborne
Of course, the price of petrol today is about £1.40 a litre. It was less a year ago, but the international oil price has gone up since—I think it is 10% higher than it was last year. That is why we have cancelled some of the fuel duty increases that the right hon. Gentleman voted for when he was in government, cut fuel duty and got rid of the fuel escalator that he supported in government.
Ed Balls
That is an answer that we will hang around the Chancellor’s neck for the next four months. He has admitted that the price of petrol is higher today than a year ago, when he decided it was too high for petrol duty to go up. Let me ask him a second question. His duty increase is due in August. If the price of petrol is still higher than the £1.33 a litre price of a year ago, will he commit now not to go ahead with the duty rise, or is the truth that he cut taxes for millionaires but does not understand about family budgets? Out of touch, out of friends and way, way out of his depth.
Mr Osborne
The right hon. Gentleman says it is my duty increase, but we are talking about his duty increase, which was set out in the March Budget before the last general election, which he voted for and helped to write.
Mr Osborne
The right hon. Gentleman says I am the Chancellor, and he is right. Since inheriting those fuel duty plans from him, I have cut fuel duty, cancelled the fuel duty increases that he voted for and got off the fuel duty escalator that he supported. That is what I have done to ensure that families are better able to cope with the economic mess he presided over when he was in the Treasury.
IMF
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
In thanking the Chancellor for advance sight of his statement today, let me begin by setting out three propositions on which I believe all parts of the House can agree. First, the ongoing crisis in the euro area is a major threat to the stability of the European and global economies, including Britain’s. Secondly, the International Monetary Fund is a hugely respected organisation that must be properly funded if it is to play its proper role. Thirdly, solving the euro crisis and ensuring that the IMF is properly resourced are both firmly in the British national interest.
However, the agreement that the Chancellor signed up to at the weekend fails on all three counts. It will not speed up, but further delay the decisive action we need from European leaders to kick-start growth and empower the European Central Bank to act. If those extra resources were to result in the IMF stepping in to act when the European Central Bank would not, that would risk weakening the IMF as an institution. Furthermore, in those circumstances, allowing eurozone leaders further room for delay and exposing the IMF and British taxpayers’ money when rich eurozone countries will not act would categorically not be in the British national interest.
Members across the House will find it baffling that that is precisely the view that the Chancellor took, just a few weeks and months ago. Following the G20 summit in October, when euro area leaders tried and failed to get international agreement on IMF resources to bail out the euro, he told the House:
“But the IMF contributing money to the eurozone bail-out fund? No. And Britain contributing money to the eurozone bail-out fund? No. That is Britain’s clear position.”—[Official Report, 27 October 2011; Vol. 534, c. 471.]
He went further in February when he told Sky:
“We are prepared to consider IMF resources but only once we see the colour of the eurozone money and we have not seen the colour of the eurozone money”.
Will the Chancellor tell us what has actually changed since then, because we have categorically not seen the colour of the eurozone’s money? The eurozone agreement that was reached last month was widely dismissed as a “sticking plaster” that merged two funds with no new money. As Wolfgang Münchau of the Financial Times stated:
“Ignore the headlines. This is not an increase in the eurozone’s rescue fund”.
In recent weeks, as market doubts have grown about Spain and Italy, market analysts have been clear that the eurozone bail-out fund has nowhere near the resources that it would need to stop a renewed crisis. There is still no firewall, and the only institution that comfortably has the resources to act—the European Central Bank—is prevented from doing so because rich euro area countries refuse to put sufficient money at risk. So, let me ask the Chancellor this: does he really think that the eurozone’s firewall is sufficient? Is this really the “big bazooka” that the Prime Minister talked about last summer? Does the Chancellor really think that the ECB now has the political backing to act as lender of last resort, and so stop contagion spreading? No, of course he does not. So why is he now signing up to an agreement that will mean that the IMF will be pressured into supporting Italy and Spain because the ECB will not, exposing as meaningless his nonsensical “countries not currencies” slogan?
Is it not the truth that the Chancellor is now conspiring in allowing the IMF to become the de facto central bank of the euro area, putting the resources of UK taxpayers and some of the world’s poorer countries at risk because rich euro area countries will not act? This deal might, for a short period, take the pressure off euro area leaders, but it will be at the cost of delaying a proper solution to the euro crisis, and it will undermine the IMF in the process.
The Chancellor says that his UK critics, on both sides of the House, are “isolated” in the global community in opposing this weekend’s agreement, but the United States has not signed up to give more money either. The US Treasury Secretary said, just this month:
“Europe is a very rich continent and they have the means to solve this on their own…I don’t think it is appropriate for the IMF to take on a larger role. The world needs to see that Europe is working on helping itself first. We are not going to shift our help for them so that the burden is on the American taxpayer”.
Canada is not contributing more money either. This is what the Canadian Finance Minister said about euro area leaders this weekend:
“They need to step up to the plate and overwhelm this issue with their own resources.”
The Chancellor says that we are “out on a limb” on this issue, but with America and Canada there too, that is some limb.
Will the Chancellor tell the House why he chose to tell us on Friday that he was contributing “just under” £10 billion more? With the US not contributing, that is clearly less than the UK’s quota share. Could it be that if he had contributed a fraction more, he would have had to come to the House and ask for parliamentary approval? After the Budget shambles—should I say the “omnishambles”?—of the last few weeks, is not the Chancellor running scared of those on both sides of the House of Commons?
Could the Chancellor also explain what has happened to the UK’s contribution to the IMF through the new agreement to borrow? When an IMF quota was first increased in 2009, it was understood that it would be offset by a reduction in UK exposure to the NAB—the new arrangements to borrow. Let me remind the Chancellor what the Financial Secretary told the House last summer:
“The G20 summit in London agreed on the importance of preserving the IMF status as a quota-based institution…so at the G20 meetings last November, agreement was reached to review the NAB and to reduce it in size once the quota increase was implemented.”—[Official Report, Second Delegated Legislation Committee, 5 July 2011; c. 3.]
So let me ask the Chancellor this: can he update the House? Has the UK contribution to the IMF been reduced through the NAB as the quota increases, as the Financial Secretary said, or has the Chancellor found a back-door route to increase the net UK contribution by more than £10 billion, without the permission of Parliament?
Mr Speaker
I am sure the shadow Chancellor is bringing himself to his last sentence.
Ed Balls
Finally, Mr Speaker, as for the Chancellor’s claim that the UK has sorted out our problems, unlike the US, the UK is mired with the rest of the euro area in no growth, high unemployment and much more borrowing than was planned, so how out of touch can this deluded Chancellor get? He should have stuck to his guns this weekend. He capitulated. This agreement was bad for the euro area, bad for the IMF, bad for the British taxpayer and bad for the British national interest.
Mr Osborne
First, I congratulate the shadow Chancellor on running the London marathon yesterday and raising money for good causes, but his arguments are a bit like his marathon legs—wobbly and about to collapse. His response started so well. In the first 30 seconds, he said he supported increased resources for the IMF and supported Britain’s contribution to it, but spent the next 10 minutes telling us why he was against those things. He was in favour of the loan before he was against it. I have to say it smacks of the political opportunism and empty opposition that have been the hallmark of his shadow chancellorship.
People in Washington this weekend who know the shadow Chancellor, because he used to help represent Britain at the IMF, were completely astonished by his opposition to the IMF deal. They wondered whether he was the same person who was in the Treasury for all those years and who wrote all those speeches for the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) about the importance of the IMF and of the international architecture being part of global solutions. Is it the same shadow Chancellor who said in November that
“the Labour party supports an increase in the UK’s International Monetary Fund subscription”?
He was asked in an interview why he opposed the Government’s decision and he said:
“I support an increase in resources to the IMF”.
Then, the interviewer said:
“Sorry? I thought you didn’t.”
He said:
“No…I support an increase in resources for the IMF”.
One is led to the conclusion that only political opportunism is driving the shadow Chancellor to the position he takes.
The right hon. Gentleman asked just a couple of specific questions. I think I answered all of them in the statement, which he should have listened to before he asked his questions. The US Treasury Secretary went out of his way to welcome the deal, but pointed out that the US had not made a loan at the London G20 summit and did not do so again because of the swap lines. Since we talked about this in the autumn, the European Central Bank has provided $1 trillion of liquidity support and €200 billion extra to the firewall, but I completely agree that euro countries need to do more to ensure reforms in their own economies.
Is the right hon. Gentleman really saying that, when a request is made for the countries of the world to come together at the IMF to provide increased contributions, Britain should stand apart from it? He represents a Labour party that stands, or used to stand, for internationalism and for the institutions of the world coming together. Now he has led the party down a complete blind alleyway. He even voted against the highlight of the Labour Government—the deal done at the London G20 summit. This is what the shadow Chancellor has done to his party—left it in no man’s land, not taken seriously at home and not taken seriously abroad. If he were ever in charge, we would be getting a bail-out from the IMF, not giving it a loan.
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Brandon Lewis
The shadow Chancellor is quite right. Does the hon. Lady not agree that in removing this VAT anomaly, it is only fair to protect the interests of the fish and chip mongers in places such as Great Yarmouth?
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mark Field
The important thing that the hon. Lady needs to recognise is that there is a distinction, as I said in the early part of my speech, between the rhetoric and the reality of austerity. We have not really had much in the way of fiscal tightening in this country. We are still borrowing and living miles beyond our means—this is a lesson, I am afraid, for the entire political class—and we will face a huge problem. We continue to pass that burden on to our children and grandchildren, not in any meaningful way for investment, but for today’s consumption, which is not sustainable.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
I think I agree with hon. Gentleman on that point. As I understand it, he is saying that he agrees with the point made earlier in the year by—I believe—Standard & Poor’s, which said that austerity by itself does not work and can become self-defeating if it leads to higher unemployment, slower growth, and therefore to higher spending, fewer taxes, and therefore higher deficits. Is that his point?
Amendment of the Law
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Danny Alexander
I will take no lessons on the treatment of elderly people from the man who was responsible for the 75p increase in the basic state pension.
Danny Alexander
So not one word of apology for the 75p increase in the basic state pension, not one word of apology for the mess that he and his colleagues left this country’s economy in—[Interruption]—and not one word of recognition that the costs of reducing the 50p rate are paid for more than five times over by other measures that impact on the wealthy.
Amendment of the Law
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
The British economy is stagnating, unemployment is rising month by month, the Government’s deficit reduction plans have gone wildly off track, middle and lower-income families and pensioners are facing rising petrol prices, rising energy bills and falling living standards—and what did the Chancellor do in his Budget yesterday? Did he admit that his economic plan has failed? Did he act to kick-start the stalled recovery? Did he give any hope to young people facing long-term unemployment? Did he set out any vision of how, over the next 20 years, Britain can compete in the world and win the investment and skilled jobs we need? Did he ease the pressure on families by cutting fuel duty, or by cancelling perverse and unfair cuts to tax credits and child benefit? No. The centrepiece of the Chancellor’s Budget, his top priority, and the political imperative for this oh so political Chancellor, was to spend more than £3 billion next year cutting the top rate of income tax for existing top rate taxpayers. People earning more than £150,000 a year—300,000 of them—are getting an average tax cut of £10,000 a year. How out of touch can he get?
To add insult to injury, the Chancellor sprung another surprise tax rise by freezing the age-related personal allowance for 4.5 million pensioners and abolishing it entirely for soon-to-be pensioners. People on modest incomes who have worked hard and saved hard all their lives will be hit by the Chancellor’s tax grab on pensioners while he gives a £40,000 tax cut to 14,000 millionaires. What can we say about that?
Ed Balls
I will in a second—I look forward to it.
As the Financial Times reports this morning:
“Some Tory backbenchers offered support for the measure”—
on pensioners—
“although they refused to be identified for fear of alienating their elderly constituents.”
Perhaps in a second some of those Conservative Back Benchers will break cover and back the pensioners tax grab in the Budget, but they are right to be worried, because all across the country, the real electorate will be thinking, “A tax cut for millionaires, paid for by millions of families and pensioners across this country? Same old Tories: looking after their friends while families and pensioners pay the price.”
Andrea Leadsom
I am grateful to the shadow Chancellor. Is he as delighted as I am that we will be introducing within the next couple of years a single, unmeans-tested pension at a significantly higher rate than the current one?
Ed Balls
We will have to wait to see the details. There will be some winners and some losers, but the one thing that we can categorically confirm today is that thousands of pensioners in the hon. Lady’s constituency will lose up to £300 a year as a result of yesterday’s Budget. She did not say whether she supported that—hardly a clarion call of support for the Chancellor’s pensions tax grab.
Michael Fallon
Could the shadow Chancellor make it absolutely clear—yes or no—whether he would restore the age-related allowance if he came to power?
Ed Balls
I will make it absolutely clear: we will vote against the change in the Budget debates and I hope that he will join us in the Lobby. We will vote against it, but the Chancellor knows very well that I will not go through every tax rate, relief, allowance or spending commitment and make commitments for three years’ time. But if the election were called tomorrow, our manifesto would be clear—we would rescind the measure and the Government would go ahead with it. That is the difference.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
I am a relative newcomer to the House, so can my right hon. Friend explain what he means when he says, “The same old Tories”?
Ed Balls
The same old Tories who thought in 1988 that it was right to cut the top rate of tax for the richest people in our country and who now think that having a second Lawsonian Budget is a good idea. It is important to remember that after hubris comes nemesis. It did not take long for Nigel Lawson to find out the error of his ways.
We set two tests for this Budget. First, does it kick-start the recovery and boost growth and jobs? Secondly, is it fair? The Chancellor has failed them decisively. On growth and jobs, I remind the House what the Chancellor said a year ago in his Budget speech:
“we will create jobs and support families. We have put fuel into the tank of the British economy.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 966.]
Since then, our economy has ground to a halt and thousands of people have lost their jobs.
I remind the Chancellor of what he said in August, when Parliament was recalled:
“Those who spent the whole of the past year telling us to follow the American example…need to answer this simple question: why has the US economy grown more slowly than the UK economy”?—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1108.]
What has happened since? Spurred on by the Obama stimulus, the US economy has been growing and unemployment falling. Here in Britain, our economy has flatlined and unemployment has been rising month after month. It does not look much of a safe haven to me.
What did we get in the Budget? We got a gaping hole when we so badly needed action to kick-start the recovery—Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth. We will not get the deficit down unless we have a plan for jobs and growth to get our economy moving and get people off the dole. When we needed a vision for the future, a modern industrial policy, what did we get? Roads privatisation and a credit-easing scheme that even the Office for Budget Responsibility says is not large enough to have any material impact.
Just look at the verdict from the OBR. The Chancellor claims it was a Budget for growth. But the OBR has downgraded its forecast for growth next year. What did it say about the ragbag of measures he announced? It said:
“We have made no other material adjustments to the economy forecast as a result of Budget 2012 policy announcements.”
It will have no impact as a growth plan.
The Chancellor claimed that it was a Budget for jobs, but not only does the OBR expect to see unemployment rising, it has increased its forecast for unemployment compared to November by 100,000—100,000 more people out of work at the end of the forecast period. As for the budget deficit, the OBR forecast confirms that the Chancellor is now set to borrow £150 billion more in this Parliament compared to his forecast at the time of the spending review. So much for “expansionary fiscal contraction”. To put it politely, that is oxymoronic. In plain language, it is just moronic.
On fairness, the Chancellor has failed too. Twenty-four hours after the Chancellor rose in the House, the full reality of the Budget is sinking in. At a time when fuel and food bills are going up for families on middle and low incomes, the Chancellor has added to them all. Whatever he says about the personal tax allowance, a family with children earning £20,000 will lose £253 a year from April. Nearly 4.5 million pensioners—[Interruption.] I am sorry for the stammer. Nearly 4.5 million pensioners who pay income tax will lose an average of £83 next April, and people turning 65 next year will lose up to £322.
At the very same time, the Budget gave a tax cut to the richest people in our country. The money could have been used to cut fuel duty or reverse perverse cuts to tax credits. It could have been used to put police officers on the beat. Instead, the Chancellor chose to cut taxes for the 300,000 top rate taxpayers.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
I must have missed it, but for the sake of clarity does the shadow Chancellor intend to put the top rate of tax back up to 50%?
Ed Balls
I am just coming to the issue of the top rate of tax. The Chancellor tries to claim that the top rate of tax does not raise any money, and that he is raising in stamp duty and tax avoidance five times the cost of cutting the top rate of tax. But his own HMRC report makes the true position clear, in table A2 on page 51. It says that next year he will give £3.01 billion in tax cuts to existing and legitimate top rate taxpayers, paid more than £150,000. That is a fact. That is six times more in tax cuts to the richest than he is raising in the stamp duty and tax avoidance measures. He is gambling that this will then bring in £2.9 billion in new tax revenues from people currently not paying tax, without any hard evidence to justify that claim—an estimate that the OBR says in the Budget documentation is “highly uncertain” and could lead to a much higher cost.
The head of the OBR said last night:
“This is a judgement based on not even a full year’s data based in terms of how people have responded to the 50p rate, in particular in terms of those self assessment tax-payers.
The costing of these sorts of changes is by no means unarguable”.
Just a few weeks ago, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said:
“If the future of the 50p rate is to be determined on the basis of evidence...then Budget 2012 will be too soon to form a robust judgement.”
Another expert has said on these matters:
“Some believe that if taxes on the wealthy are cut, new revenue will miraculously appear. I think their reasoning is this—all those British billionaires who demonstrate their patriotism by hiding from the taxman in Monaco or some Caribbean bolt-hole will rush back to pay more tax but at a lower rate. Pull the other one.”
That was the Business Secretary speaking to the Liberal Democrat conference last September. Pull the other one indeed. A £3 billion tax cut giving £10,000 each to 300,000 taxpayers and we are supposed to believe that all these people in tax havens are suddenly going to say, “I want to pay more tax.” Let me say to the Chancellor, “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
May I therefore assume that a 50p tax rate will be in the shadow Chancellor’s next manifesto?
Ed Balls
There will be a vote next week, and we will vote against the 50p change. It is the wrong tax cut at the wrong time. I have always said that no tax rate is set in stone, but how can anyone believe it is right to take tax credits from working families, child benefit from middle-income families and more tax from pensioners, but give £10,000, on average, to every top rate taxpayer in the country? If there were a general election tomorrow, our manifesto would state clearly that we would reverse it. That is the clearest answer I will give.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend think it would be helpful, ahead of next week’s debate, for the Prime Minister to place in the Library a list of which members of the Government will benefit from that cut in the top rate?
Ed Balls
I think we should leave people’s trust funds out of this. I will come back to that in a moment, but I will not press the Government on it.
The Chancellor took a reckless gamble on jobs and the economy, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have taken a reckless gamble on NHS reform and police cuts, and now the Chancellor is taking a reckless gamble with the fairness of our tax system by handing out massive tax cuts to legitimate taxpayers in the hope—based on no evidence—that the cuts will pay for themselves by somehow bringing all the tax avoiders back into the fold. That is a fact.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that under the previous Labour Government the 50p tax rate applied for just 37 miserable days and that for the rest of the time their tax on the highest income earners was lower than under the coalition Government?
Ed Balls
In reply, let me quote what the Chancellor said in October 2010:
“The public must know that the burden is being fairly shared. That's why I said last year: we are all in this together. And I am clear…that those with the most, need to pay more. That is why… I have stuck with the 50p tax”—
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Conservative party conference, October 2010. Eighteen months on, what has changed? The public still want the burden to be fairly shared, but far from keeping the top rate of tax, he is ditching it.
Let me read another quote. In October 2009, the Chancellor said:
“we could not even think of abolishing the 50p rate on the rich while at the same time I am asking many of our public sector workers to accept a pay freeze to protect their jobs. I think we can all agree that would be grossly unfair.”
We can all agree on that. What has changed? What is the truth? It was all a con. The mask has slipped. To 200,000 families struggling on less than £17,000 a year, he says, “I’m going to cut your tax credits to make you work harder”, but to the highest earners, he says, “I’m going to cut your taxes because if I don’t, you won’t work hard and pay your taxes.” That is it. To make the poor work harder, the Chancellor makes them poorer. To make the rich work harder, he makes them richer. Does that not tell us everything we need to know about the Chancellor? He is cutting tax credits for the poor, cutting child benefit in the middle, cutting tax help for pensioners and cutting taxes at the top. That is his priority.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
It is apposite that the shadow Chancellor used the word “con”. If he believes that the top rate of tax is about economics, not politics, why, in 13 long years, when they had the money, time and majorities, did the Labour Government not introduce that top rate of tax?
Ed Balls
We all agree that, after the global financial crisis, tough choices need to be made on tax spending and pay to get the deficit down, and we all agree that it needs to be done fairly. Two years ago, the Chancellor said that he had a plan—with tax rises and spending cuts, the economy would grow and unemployment would fall—but he has had to come back to the House and announce further tax rises because his plan is not working. But who is paying more tax? The pensioners. And who is getting a tax cut? The millionaires. That is the reality.
The Liberal Democrats call this a Robin Hood Budget, but they have got it the wrong way around. Robin Hood took from the rich to give to the poor, but the Budget takes from lower and middle-income families to give to the rich. Do they not see? The Chancellor is not Robin Hood; he is the Sheriff of Nottingham. As for jobs and growth, he could not give a Friar Tuck. As for Maid Marian—trapped in the castle, desperate to escape—we all feel sorry for the Business Secretary, and not just because, as a result of the pensions tax grab, he is probably the only member of this millionaire Cabinet who will be not better off but worse off as a result of the Budget—possibly with the Justice Secretary as well. I am not sure. But he cannot say he was not warned.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
I would be interested to know whether the shadow Chancellor has actually read the Budget and chart B5, which shows that the effect is worst on the top quintile? If he could be bothered to look at that and read the Budget, he might want to come back and change his mind.
Ed Balls
The hon. Gentleman should have read the small print. It is fine for him to accuse me of not having read the Budget, but is the effect of the 50p tax cut in that chart? I think not. I have read it. He has not. It is not there. If it were, the benefits would be off the scale.
After that disastrous and woeful intervention, let me return to the Business Secretary. The Business Secretary cannot say that he was not warned. In fact, he did the warning. On deficit reduction, before the election, he said:
“The IFS is right to point out that cutting spending further this year would be extremely dangerous given the weakness of the economy.”
He also said that
“it’s very difficult to believe that large sudden cuts would do anything other than a great deal of harm”.
He was right in his analysis of the dangers of going too far, too fast, and he is right today. In his devastating leaked letter to the Prime Minister, he said that the Government were without a
“compelling vision of where the country is heading beyond sorting out the fiscal mess”.
So why has he signed up to this completely vision-free Budget?
Ed Balls
No.
I am going to read again what the Business Secretary said on the top rate of tax, because it is such a great quote:
“Some believe that if taxes on the wealthy are cut, new revenue will miraculously appear. I think their reasoning is this—all those British billionaires who demonstrate their patriotism by hiding from the taxman in Monaco or some Caribbean bolt-hole will rush back to pay more tax but at a lower rate. Pull the other one.”
I have to ask him then: why is he going to stand here today and defend a Budget that tries to do just that?
We all know what the Deputy Prime Minister said last September. Let me tell the House—if anyone is interested in what he says. He said:
“I do not believe that the priority at a time like this is to give a tax cut to a tiny, tiny number of people who are much, much better off than anybody else.”
Let us be honest. None of us is remotely surprised that the Deputy Prime Minister has completely capitulated, just as he did on VAT, tuition fees and the NHS, but the Business Secretary is another matter. He knows that our proposal to kick-start the recovery is right because he told the Chancellor to do it. He knows that our proposal to set up a business investment bank is right because he told the Prime Minister to do it. And he knows that cutting the top rate of tax now is the wrong priority, deeply unfair and a betrayal of his and his party’s values and progressive tradition.
We all know all we need to know about the Deputy Prime Minister, but we all had—and have—higher hopes for the Business Secretary. I have to say to him—and to his colleagues—that I understand the incredibly difficult position he is now in, but I have to ask him: what on earth would the Vince Cable of five years ago think of what he is doing now? As the sketch writer in The Independent wrote last week:
“Vince has been so hammered by events…It isn’t clear any more that he could ‘press the nuclear button’ hard enough to make it go off.”
Prove us all wrong, Vince—prove us all wrong.
The Chancellor used to say, “We’re all in this together.” Not any more. In tough times, the choices that this Tory-led Government are making tell us everything we need to know about them and how totally out of touch they are with what life is like in our country. Here are the facts. The Chancellor’s plan has failed. Trying to raise taxes and cut spending too far and too fast has backfired. The country needs a Budget for growth and jobs. Instead, we got more of the same, and with his tax cut for millionaires, he is piling insult upon injury for millions of families and pensioners across this country.
Ed Balls
The HMRC report states that, in 2013-14, the static cost—that is, the cost to existing top rate taxpayers—will be £3 billion, rising to £3.35 billion, then £3.7 billion and £4.2 billion. It then states that that will be offset by a behavioural impact of £2.9 billion, £3.2 billion, £3.6 billion and £4 billion, which I think is heroic. The document states that behavioural responses are often “highly uncertain”, and the Business Secretary himself said that such assumptions were utter nonsense. He said, “Pull the other one!” Is he now saying, “Mea culpa—I got it totally wrong”?
Vince Cable
I am just trying to deal with the facts. I believe in evidence-based decision making. The information in the Budget document, which has been validated as the best central estimate by Robert Chote of the OBR, suggests that we are talking about a revenue loss of £100 million. I think that the right hon. Gentleman is fundamentally underestimating the financial significance of something that happened on an epic scale when his Government moved on the top rate, which involved simply switching from one year to another. The underlying impact on revenue has been independently estimated at £100 million.
Ed Balls
The document from HMRC makes it absolutely clear in section A.19 that that is not HMRC’s view but the Government’s view. It was a ministerial decision on those estimates. But that does not take away from the fact that a £3 billion cost—£10,000 on average for top rate taxpayers—will be offset by a behavioural impact that is huge and, in the Business Secretary’s own words, absolute nonsense. Let us deal in the complexity of the facts, not the simplistic nonsense that the Chancellor told the House yesterday. Does the Business Secretary, with his integrity, look at those numbers—£2.9 billion, £3.2 billion, £3.6 billion and £4 billion—and say, “Yup, I agree”?
Vince Cable
I think we are talking about integrity and statistics. Of course there has been a big change under this Government, compared with their predecessor. The numbers that the shadow Chancellor used to use were his own numbers. The numbers we are quoting here are independently verified by the Office for Budget Responsibility. We will analyse the underlying assumptions in those figures. The figures in the Budget document are absolutely unambiguous and they have been endorsed by an independent assessor—something that the right hon. Gentleman was never used to when he was in government—which confirms the value of the numbers that we have described.
Vince Cable
I do not know where the hon. Lady has been for the past 24 hours. The central feature of the Budget was a very large tax cut for exactly the group of people she describes, and it will have exactly the consequences that she describes.
Let me get back to the core issue, which exercises me and the shadow Chancellor. The basic economic strategy of the Government is to get back to a stable, sustainable form of economic growth. I want to address head-on his central criticism, which he has made many times. It can be summarised in the phrase “too much, too fast”. This Government have a deficit reduction programme that was developed following the autumn statement, and it involves removing the structural deficit over a period of six years.
The Darling plan, which the last Government set out, involved a deficit elimination programme of seven years. What I am not clear about, particularly in view of the stridency of the shadow Chancellor’s views, is: what is the Balls plan? Is it for seven years, eight, 10, 20 or never? What is the alternative speed of deficit reduction that the Opposition are urging on us?
We are acting, successfully, on good advice. A few weeks ago, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde said:
“Those countries that have fiscal space, and that can slow down their fiscal consolidation efforts are very few, and I’m afraid Britain is not in that particular group.”
That is because of the sheer scale of the structural deficit that we inherited.
Vince Cable
I will give way in a moment.
The CBI, quoted in evidence by the Opposition, was equally clear, as reflected in its view that we cannot afford to slow down the austerity programme. That is what authoritative people have to say about “too much, too fast”.
Ed Balls
The Business Secretary is a former chief economist. He read out a quote from the head of the International Monetary Fund. On the previous day, the chief economist of the IMF said exactly the opposite—that if growth was “undershooting”, a country like Britain should
“slow the pace of deficit reduction”.
Is the Business Secretary really saying that he is ignoring the advice of Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist of the IMF? I would have thought that the right hon. Gentleman would have recognised Mr Blanchard’s economic credentials.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
The Chancellor’s policy on child benefit seems to be that a two-earner family on £84,000 can keep all their child benefit, but a one-earner family on £43,000—whether that is a single parent, or where mum or dad stays at home to look after the kids—will lose all their child benefit, which is £2,500 if the family has three kids. What is fair about that? For the benefit of Labour Members, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Justice Secretary, the Prime Minister and Government Back Benchers, will the Chancellor tell the House what is today’s policy on child benefit?
Mr Osborne
What I would say to the right hon. Gentleman is that I think it is fair to ask those in the top 15% of the income distribution to make a contribution to the fiscal consolidation. I happen to think that that is fair. If we now have a Labour shadow Chancellor who thinks it is not fair to ask people in the top 15% of income distribution to make a contribution to cutting a 9% budget deficit, he has completely lost sight of his party’s values.
Ed Balls
So on the comparison of £43,000 and £84,000, we are none the wiser. Let me ask the Chancellor another question about family finances. A year ago, he promised to get the economy growing and introduce a fair fuel stabiliser, which would cut fuel duty when petrol prices were higher. One year on, he is now indicating that he is going to press ahead with fuel duty increases, even though rising oil prices mean that pump prices have today reached a record high. How can he press ahead when petrol prices are 4p higher than they were in last year’s Budget? What has happened to the stabiliser, or is it not the truth that he cannot do the right thing on child benefit, tax credits or fuel because his plans have failed? A year ago, he said in the Budget that he would put fuel into the tank of the British economy. The fact is that the economy has tanked—on the hard shoulder—and this Chancellor has run out of fuel.
Mr Osborne
There is an inconvenient truth, which is that the fuel duty rises that the right hon. Gentleman refers to are the ones put in place by the Labour Government, which he and any Labour Member who was in the previous Parliament voted for. That is the unbelievable opportunism of the Labour party today. One month it is VAT, another month it is child tax credits and now it is fuel. He is like a pinball machine, bouncing all over the place. He does not have a credible economic policy.
Today, the right hon. Gentleman may have been listening to his Labour leader on Radio 5 Live. This is what a caller from Wakefield—very close to the shadow Chancellor’s constituency—said:
“I voted Labour all my life…but we need to have a credible Opposition…You’re not going to be the Prime Minister of this country by any stretch of the imagination. I’d put my life on that.”
Another Labour voter said:
“It’s really bad what you’re doing.”
The truth is this: they need a credible economic policy to be a credible Opposition and a credible shadow Chancellor and they do not have it.
Living Standards
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gauke
I was actually talking about the overall cost. We will give details of the cost of administering child benefit when we announce the details of the policy, which, as the hon. Lady will know, we will do shortly. However, as the Chancellor has said:
“We simply cannot ask those earning just £15,000 or £30,000 to go on paying the child benefit of those earning £50,000 or £100,000.”
It is simply not fair for working parents on low incomes to subsidise millionaires. If members of the Labour party believe in that, they can add it to their election literature along with their opposition to the benefit cap. By making these changes, we can continue to direct child benefit to where it is needed most, supporting millions of families and millions of children from birth until they leave full-time education at the age of 18 or even 19.
Ed Balls
Can the Minister explain to Members on both sides of the House why he thinks it fair for a family with a joint income of £84,000 to keep all their child benefit, while a one-earner family will lose all their child benefit if the husband or wife stays at home and their income is just £43,000?
Mr Gauke
Let me explain the challenge that we face. Basing child benefit on household income means a full means-testing regime with all the complexities that that involves: all the form-filling, and all the administration problems. I do not know whether that is what the shadow Chancellor wants, or whether he supports the position taken by the shadow Chief Secretary, who would not touch child benefit at all; but if we do not pursue the policy that we have announced, we will incur an additional £2.5 billion of borrowing every year. That is what the Labour party is committing itself to.
Ed Balls
The Minister is right: the policy is very complicated. It is a pity that the Government did not work that out before they announced it 18 months ago. The Secretary of State for Justice wants to keep it, the Deputy Prime Minister wants to drop it, the Prime Minister also wants to drop it, and the Chancellor is confused. My advice to the Minister is this: sit down, finish the speech and let us see what happens in the Budget, because this is doing his career no good at all.
Mr Gauke
Treasury Ministers have taken advice from the right hon. Gentleman in the past, and it did not end well. In that context, I will continue my speech.
At the same time as refocusing child benefit, we are investing £7.2 billion in the fairness premium, including £2.5 billion in the pupil premium, to support the poorest in their early years and at every stage of their education. There are substantial reforms and tough decisions to make, but we have not shirked our responsibility to do so. We will not burden future generations with unsustainable debts that would mean higher taxes and diminished public services. We cannot keep building debt to fund spending on today’s generation at the expense of tomorrow’s.
Financial Services Bill
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
Well, the report names Tony Blair, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and the shadow Chancellor. One of the interesting things is that the shadow Chancellor was, of course, instrumental, as I understand it, in creating the tripartite committee. We will hear in his response a detailed defence of the decisions he took.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Chancellor share with the House the contents of the conversation I had with him in Downing street in December following the publication of that report and following my conversation with the chair of the FSA?
Mr Osborne
It sounds like the right hon. Gentleman cannot remember it himself. No doubt he will use the time allotted to him to tell us about the role he played both as the adviser at the Treasury during the years when the system was created and as City Minister when the ABN AMRO deal was signed off, and about his role in the Cabinet when it decided on its response to those things.
Ed Balls
When I asked the chair of FSA, he said he could have inserted into the footnotes of that 400-page report any number of quotes from the Chancellor, who was at the time in opposition. Will he remind the House of any of his quotes from that period on the dangers of excessive regulation that could have been included in the FSA report?
Mr Osborne
First, the FSA report on RBS is worth reading and stands by itself. The chairman of the FSA chose to put the right hon. Gentleman’s name in it, which clearly irks him. Secondly, in opposition, we not only voted against the creation of the tripartite committee but consistently warned about growing debt in the economy—not just me, but my predecessors as shadow Chancellor. We will see tonight whether the Opposition vote against our proposed arrangements. We made those warnings; we are now proposing reforms to ensure that those sorts of things do not happen again.
Ed Balls
Perhaps the Chancellor should remind the House that the shadow Chancellor at the time also voted against Bank of England independence. In November 2006, the then shadow Financial Secretary, who is now Financial Secretary, said:
“Effective light-touch, risk-based and principles-based regulation is in the interests of the sector globally.”—[Official Report, 28 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 995.]
Could that quote have been included in the FSA report?
Mr Osborne
I think the key word is “effective”, which is clearly what was lacking. If the right hon. Gentleman wants me to read out the legion of quotes that we have from him as City Minister, how about this one? He said:
“I believe that we are right to avoid prescriptive, heavy-handed regulation in Britain. Indeed, I believe that while it is Bank of England independence that is regularly cited as the Government’s most significant financial reform, the establishment of the FSA has been as important for Britain”,
and that
“It is important the FSA continues to deliver a light-touch and risk-based regulatory approach.”
We have ended up having a ding-dong across the Dispatch Box, but if he is against what we propose to do to change the system he created, will he vote against the Bill tonight?
Ed Balls
The Chancellor also said in June 2006 that this
“regulation has been burdensome, complex and makes cross-border market penetration more difficult.”
In June 2005, he said that
“we need to build our capacity to deliver world-beating goods and services, whether it is complex financial derivatives pioneered in the City of London”.
Are those quotes that could have been included in the FSA report? There are many more.
Mr Osborne
This series of interventions is a little bit self-obsessed, and it reminds everyone of the right hon. Gentleman’s central role—
Mr Osborne
Well, that is a bit like the John Cleese sketch—the right hon. Gentleman started it by creating the biggest banking crisis in this country’s history. We are trying to clear it up. That is what this Bill is about. In all those interventions, we heard not one word about whether he will support what we are doing to clear up the mess he created.
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is tempting me back into the fertile territory of the shadow Chancellor’s role in the banking crash, but not least because I do not want to provoke a reaction, I think that I should probably move on to the flaws of the system that the right hon. Gentleman helped to create as Treasury adviser.
Mr Osborne
Maybe we should just exchange our notes; then we could spare the House.
Mr Osborne
For a while, they did make an awful lot of money. Unfortunately, they then lost an awful lot of money, which is one reason why we are here talking about the legislation.
Before any Minister comes to the House of Commons to ask for an existing regulatory regime to be replaced, it is incumbent on him or her to explain why it is felt to be necessary, so let me explain. Another flaw of the current system is that when the crisis hit in 2007 and 2008, no one knew who was actually in charge. The Treasury Committee of the last Parliament, led by John McFall, said in its report:
“The biggest failings of the Tripartite’s handling of Northern Rock were that it was not clear who was in charge, and, because the Tripartite took a minimalist view of their respective responsibilities, necessary actions fell between three stools.”
The House of Lords Committee, which also did some excellent work on the matter during the last Parliament, said that
“the tripartite authorities in the United Kingdom…failed to maintain financial stability and were found wanting in dealing with the crisis, in part because the roles of the three parties were not well enough defined and it was not clear who was in charge”.
In other words, a whole system of financial regulation had been created by the previous Government, yet no one knew who was in charge.
That led to the third fatal flaw that became apparent. The Government of the day, accountable to Parliament and the public for the use of taxpayers’ money, simply did not have the powers to do what they felt necessary when the crisis hit. My predecessor as Chancellor said in his recent memoir:
“The whole system depended on the chairman of the FSA, the Governor of the Bank and the Chancellor seeing things in exactly the same way. The problem was that in September 2007, we simply did not see things in the same way.”
That, of course, led to the confusion in the autumn of 2007. As he said,
“I could not in practice order the Bank to do what I wanted”,
even when taxpayers’ money was at stake.
On top of all those flaws in the tripartite system, it is not as though customers were being better protected from the mis-selling scandals that have beset the industry for the past 30 years. The payment protection insurance saga happened on its watch. In 2001 alone, firms were forced to pay more than £1 billion-worth of redress to consumers who were mis-sold products.
Those are the flaws of the tripartite system—flaws that cost this country in output more than 10% of our entire gross domestic product, flaws that have led to hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs, flaws that wiped out the savings of millions of small shareholders, and flaws that saddled an entire country with more than £1 trillion of debt. The British people need to be confident that mistakes have been acknowledged and that lessons have been learned. The legislation that we have put before the House today shows that they have been learned.
Ed Balls
Without wanting to disrupt too much the Chancellor’s political narrative, I ask him to remind the House of the regulatory structure and of who was in charge of regulation during the scandals involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Barings, Equitable Life and Johnson Matthey. Were those scandals all the result of the tripartite structure, or might some of them have preceded it, at a time when the Bank of England had the lead on banking and financial regulation?
Mr Osborne
I would make this important point to the right hon. Gentleman: of course those were failures of regulation, and of course the Bank of England was in charge of banking regulation when they happened, but they were failures of regulation in individual firms—detailed work was done afterwards to find out what went wrong and to try to put it right—not failures across the system. The collapse of Barings did not bring down the whole system, whereas the run on Northern Rock created shockwaves around the world. The decision in 1997 to remove the Bank of England’s macro-prudential role was a fatal mistake.
Mr Osborne
The right hon. Gentleman calls it rubbish, but let me say this: he was instrumental in a way that no one else in the Labour party was in designing the system that I am proposing to dismantle. He is well within his rights to get up and say, “I defend the system that I created. I think that it is the best way of regulating financial services, and what you have come up with is wrong”, but if he believes that, he should have the courage to vote against the Bill tonight. If that is his view, he should get up and say, “I’m going to vote against your approach because I don’t think it’s the right one”, but I do not think that he has the courage to do so, because he is trying to escape his past, rather than defend it.
Ed Balls
I will set out our position in my speech, but the idea that by making the Bank of England independent and adding a second deputy governor with responsibility for macro-prudential financial stability on both the Monetary Policy Committee and the FSA board, the Bank’s role in macro-prudential stability is diminished or removed is plain wrong. The Chancellor should not be allowed to state things that are outwith the facts.
Mr Osborne
The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled to that view, but it is not shared by the Select Committees that have considered the matter, including during the previous Parliament; it is not a view shared in the work by the FSA on what went wrong and the failure to conduct macro-prudential analysis; and it is not a view shared by almost everyone who has looked at the failures of the British regulatory system during the period in question. He is perfectly entitled to his view—I am not surprised that he holds it, given that he was responsible for creating the system—but if it is his view, he should have the courage to vote against our proposals to dismantle it.
Mr Osborne
That is the task that we are giving them. They must ensure that they have the necessary expertise and resources. The interim committee is looking across the piece—I will deal later with the role of regulating individual firms—but it is interesting that its two financial stability reports highlighted a specific financial instrument, the exchange-traded fund, and expressed concern about its rapid growth. I am not aware that the regulatory system that existed in 2006-07 spotted, for example, the rapid increase in the use of collateralised debt obligations. It did not warn about specific instruments and the growth in their use. The financial stability reports of the committee that we have already set up demonstrate an attention to particular complex market instruments and their potential systemic risks.
Ed Balls
Will the Chancellor explain why, if the key is locating regulation in the central bank, those pressures before 2007 were not spotted by the US Federal Reserve, which was the central banker and the regulator? He is giving a very UK-specific analysis. What about all the other examples of central banks failing to spot these growing problems?
Mr Osborne
There are examples of central banks, such as the Canadian and Spanish central banks, which were much more aggressive in counter-cyclical regulation, and which felt empowered to make the decisions. In the United States—I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman has had conversations about this with the United States Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman—things have been taken to the opposite extreme. There is a plethora of regulators—too many different regulators. The single biggest problem in the United States probably occurred in the insurance industry, in the American International Group. There was an insurance regulator based in one particular state and it was not something for which the Federal Reserve had a responsibility. Ben Bernanke has talked about the role of central banks, and I shall say something about his view later.
I think it right for us to create a Financial Policy Committee that is on a statutory footing. I have talked about the importance of its having external independent members who are able to provide market expertise and challenge received opinion, but I believe—and this may be something that we can tease out in Committee—that we should think about how we can get the balance right, and avoid conflicts of interest while also bringing in people with real expertise.
What makes the Financial Policy Committee that the Bill will establish such a radical departure in terms of policy making is that we are not only asking it to assess the risks throughout the financial system, but proposing to give it powerful tools with which to do something about those risks. The Monetary Policy Committee assesses the risks of inflation and whether it will overshoot or undershoot the target, and then alters interest rates as appropriate. The Financial Policy Committee will be given macro-prudential tools with which to hit the financial stability objectives set out in the Bill, and to reduce and remove systemic risks to the stability and resilience of the UK financial system.
Mr Osborne
I would certainly be happy to have a debate about that on the Floor of the House. It is a decision for my colleagues, the usual channels and so forth, but in my opinion the important tools given to this body will have a real impact on our constituents. It will affect the kind of house they are able to afford on their income—the bread and butter of people’s daily lives—and it is important for us all to understand that as we create instruments of policy.
We are seeking to address another flaw in the system by making the Bank of England the single point of accountability when it comes to the prudential regulation of banks, large and complex investment firms, building societies and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) reminded us, significant insurance companies. A new prudential regulation authority will be established within the Bank to perform that major new function.
As the shadow Chancellor pointed out, the Federal Reserve in the US already has responsibility for the prudential regulation of major banks, but not of other financial firms. Let me cite what Ben Bernanke said in what I believe was testimony before Congress:
“The Federal Reserve’s role in banking supervision complements its other responsibilities, especially its role in managing financial crises...During the current crisis, supervisory expertise and information have repeatedly proved invaluable in helping us to address potential systemic risks involving specific financial institutions and markets and to effectively fulfil our role as lender of last resort...The Fed’s prudential supervision benefits, in turn, from the expertise we develop in carrying out other parts of our mission—for example, the knowledge of financial and economic conditions we gather in the formulation of monetary policy.”
I raise this matter because at the heart of the new arrangements we are seeking to establish an understanding that today’s financial markets are so interconnected that the failure of a single firm can bring down the whole system, and risks across the system can bring down many single firms. These feedback loops are what proved so devastating in the crisis.
Some critics of the legislation now accept the need for a macro-prudential Financial Policy Committee, but still doubt whether we should give the Bank responsibility for the micro-prudential regulation of individual firms, too. I would argue that because the interconnections are so great, the FPC could not do its job without knowing what is going on in firms, and a prudential regulator could not do its job without knowing about risks across the system. The best way to combine the insights is to put them both under the aegis of the same institution—the central bank.
I understand that the shadow Chancellor is concerned that our Bill does not create additional lines of communication between the deputy governors of the Bank and the Chancellor, bypassing the Governor, so he might like to explain what he meant. I considered the idea, but rejected it. I think we need to force the Bank of England itself to reconcile its internal differences rather than create additional lines of accountability between the Chancellor and a deputy governor. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] He says, “Dear me”, so perhaps he will explain why he wants to institutionalise a regime in which the No. 2 constantly undermines the No. 1.
The Joint Committee and the Treasury Select Committee have raised what I regard as a far more relevant concern—the accountability of the Bank of England, given its important new responsibilities. We have listened carefully to the recommendations from both Committees and while I do not propose to abolish the court of the Bank of England, I do propose to give it important new powers to hold the executive Bank to account. The Governor and the court of the Bank of England have agreed that a new oversight committee, consisting of the non-executive members of the court, should be created. This group of external independent people will ensure that the Bank discharges its financial oversight responsibilities correctly; it will be able to commission both internal and external reports on the Bank’s policy makers’ handling of particular events and particular periods of policy making. Those reports will be published, with market-sensitive information protected, if necessary.
The Governor is of course, as is the case today, a key figure in the arrangements. It is important that he or she is not only independent of the Government of the day, but seen to be so. The recent experience of reappointing Governors after their first five-year term has expired has not been a very happy one. It has created unnecessary uncertainty and called into question political confidence in the Governor. Although I would hope that this Government would handle the whole thing better than their predecessors did, it makes sense simply to eliminate the possibility of discord entirely, so schedule 2 provides that the next Governor of the Bank of England and his or her successors will serve a single eight-year non-renewable term. That is a sensible reform.
The third flaw in the current arrangements was the fact that the Chancellor of the day felt he did not have the necessary powers to act in the interests of taxpayers. This is another area where the work of the Joint Committee and the Select Committee have proved invaluable. The Bill makes it clear that the day-to-day responsibility for financial stability lies with the Bank of England. We do not want the Treasury second-guessing that work. Beyond setting the parameters for the regulatory system, the Chancellor should become involved only if there is a material risk to public funds. The responsibility in this regard is made clear in the Bill, and in the memorandum of understanding that we have drawn up with the Bank. The Bill makes it clear that the Governor has a responsibility to inform the Treasury immediately as soon as there is a material risk of circumstances arising in which public funds might reasonably be expected to be used.
The Bill is also rightly clear that the use of public funds is entirely a decision for the Chancellor, as he or she is the person accountable to Parliament, and through Parliament to the public. My predecessor is, again, revealing about the limitations of the current arrangements in his book:
“My frustration was that I could not in practice order the Bank to do what I wanted. Only the Bank of England can put the necessary funds into the banking system…I asked Treasury officials if there was a way of forcing the Governor’s hand. The fact that we had given the Bank independence had a downside as well as an upside.”
Of course my predecessor had, as any Chancellor does, the general power of direction over the Bank that the Bank of England Act 1946 provides, but that general power of direction has never been used, so it is a nuclear option that might blow up anyone who tries to use it. That was the conclusion that my predecessor reluctantly came to.
That is unsatisfactory. The Bank must, of course, be protected from politicians who want to use its balance sheet against the wishes of the Governor simply because those politicians want to avoid using the Government’s balance sheet, but the Bank should not be able to use that as an excuse to withhold its services as an agent from a Government prepared to use its own Government balance sheet. Otherwise, in many situations that becomes, in effect, a veto on an elected Government’s fiscal decision making.
The Bill and the memorandum of understanding give the Chancellor of the day not only the right to be informed when there is a material risk to public funds, but the right to ask the Bank to analyse different options that might be available to deal with the risk, and in the newly added clause 57 the Bill gives the Chancellor a defined power of direction to require the Bank to provide liquidity to a particular firm or to put a particular firm into resolution or to provide liquidity to the general system, provided that the Chancellor does so using the Government’s own balance sheet, and makes that clear.
Ed Balls
Can the Chancellor envisage a situation in which the Governor of the Bank of England may judge not to inform the Chancellor that there is both a material threat to stability and the need for the use of public funds—and if a Governor were to make such a judgment not to inform the Chancellor, would that be his personal judgment?
Mr Osborne
First, the Bank Governor will have a statutory obligation to inform the Chancellor, so they would be failing in their statutory obligations—
Ed Balls
This is important, so I will ask the question again. Can the Chancellor envisage a situation in which the Governor of the Bank of England would choose not to inform the Chancellor because in the Governor’s view there was not a material threat to financial stability, and therefore no need for the use of public funds? And if the Governor chose not to come to the Chancellor in such a situation, would that be the Governor’s own personal judgment—for example, if the deputy governor for financial stability or the head of the Prudential Regulation Authority took a different view?
Mr Osborne
The legislation makes it clear that that is the Bank’s responsibility. Of course, the Governor is chair of the key committees—the Financial Policy Committee and the Prudential Regulation Authority—that would make these judgments, but we have to require the Bank to resolve its internal differences. Obviously the Bank has its own procedures to deal with any dispute, which it will develop, but we have deliberately created boards and committees that have independent members and external oversight. Of course there are three deputy governors, but ultimately—perhaps that is just going to be a point of disagreement between me and the right hon. Gentleman—I do not think it is right to create different lines of accountability from the Bank of England to the Chancellor of the day. The Chancellor has to deal with the Bank, and with the person of the Governor. However much legislation we write and however many clauses we put in place, those who do my job and that of the Governor also have a very important responsibility to get on with each other and to try to make that arrangement work.
Ed Balls
The problem is that in the legislation, in the memorandum of understanding and in the Chancellor’s own answers there is a gap, a hole and an ambiguity. In his speech he referred to the judgment of the Governor, then he talks about the judgment of the Bank and then he says that the Bank must resolve whether the Governor’s view is the same as that of the rest of the Bank. I repeat my question: can the right hon. Gentleman envisage being concerned by a situation in which the Governor chooses not to come to him asking for funds because the Governor believes that there is not a systemic risk, even if it is coming to the Chancellor’s attention that other senior statutory office holders in the Bank have a different view? Can the right hon. Gentleman envisage such a situation, when the Governor chooses, for example —as he said, this is a judgment for the Governor—that the moral hazard overrides the systemic potential threat?
Mr Osborne
As I say, it is the responsibility of the Bank to inform the Government: that is what the legislation and the memorandum of understanding make clear. The Bank, of course, has its own procedures for coming to a view within the Bank. Creating a system where a deputy governor could bypass the Governor and go directly to the Chancellor would be a recipe for division at the Bank. We have to force the Bank to come to a collective view and then deal with the Government of the day.
Ed Balls
This goes absolutely to the heart of the issue. The reality is that if we have a tripartite or quartet system in which the statutory regulator is not the same as the Governor, the head of the PRA or the head of the Financial Services Authority can have a different view and say that in their judgment the threat to the company and to the system is so great that it justifies action, even if the Governor judges that the moral hazard risks from intervention override that threat, and that therefore there should not be a request for public funds. In the current system, the Chancellor would hear from the head of the FSA—from Adair Turner—whereas under the new system and the memorandum of understanding he will not hear, other than from the person of the Governor. My question to the Chancellor is: does he worry about that and about the potential instability and misinformation to him that could come as a result of the memorandum of understanding that he has drafted?
Mr Osborne
The first point I make to the right hon. Gentleman is that the Bank Governor does not come to the Government when he thinks public funds should be used; he does so when—this is set out in the legislation— there is a material risk that public funds may be required. Of course the decision to use public funds would be one for the Chancellor of the day.
The second point that I make is that the problem with the tripartite committee was one set out in my predecessor’s book: in autumn 2007 there were three different views and there was no way of reconciling them—and there was no clarity about who had power and responsibility. What we are talking about here, and what I am explaining, is a new power of direction. Of course any Chancellor would think very carefully before using it, but this power makes it absolutely clear that once there is a material risk to public funds, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not only a power, as the current person doing the Chancellor’s job has, to authorise the use of public funds—that is what my predecessor did in respect of the Royal Bank of Scotland—but a power of direction to provide liquidity to an individual firm and liquidity to the system. Those were not powers that my predecessor had. Of course, as I will come on to discuss, there are certain constraints and things that have to be done to inform people before they are used, but these are new powers that we are giving so that the Chancellor of the day does have powers, provided that he or she is prepared to use the Government’s own balance sheet.
Ed Balls
The whole point—this is so important, and goes to the heart of one of the debates in the Committee—is that in the historical examples given by the Chancellor, when the then Chancellor wanted to act and others in the regulatory system did not, the Governor of the Bank of England was one of those who did not. In the situation that the Chancellor has now set up—article 20 of the memorandum of understanding states this clearly—there will be a personal relationship between the Chancellor and the Governor. This ‘twin-peaks’ system is a personalised conversation, in that the Chancellor hears the Bank’s view from only one individual. I ask him again: would he be worried if he did not hear a view in such circumstances? Is this really a matter for the Governor’s judgment, as the MOU says, or should the statutory office holders—the head of the Prudential Regulation Authority, the Financial Services Authority and the deputy governor from the Financial Policy Committee—have not only a view but a right for that view to be heard by the Chancellor and then by Parliament? That is my question.
Mr Osborne
We can explore this at greater length in Committee, but I say to the right hon. Gentleman now that we are trying to avoid a situation in which different people in the Bank think they have a direct line to the Chancellor. We are trying to require the Bank to resolve its internal differences, and we are creating various committees, balancing the membership between external and internal members, but we absolutely see a central role for the Governor of the Bank—and I do not make any apologies for that.
I was not in the room when some of these conversations happened in recent years, but as far as I can see, and as has been reported since, it is clear that personal relations between the Bank Governor and some of the very senior members of the Government completely broke down. That is not a situation we want to see in the future, and I think that the person who does my job and the person who does the job of the Governor of the Bank of England have an obligation to get on with each other and maintain the personal relationship; that is a very important part of both our jobs. No amount of legislation or MOU—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) says that it is not about getting on with each other. Frankly, it is about working at this very important relationship at the top of our financial system, and not getting into a situation in which those involved are not able to pick up the phone and talk to each other. Yes, of course we are institutionalising the arrangement, creating memorandums of understanding and so on, but I do not want to detract from the fact that there is also a personal responsibility for the Chancellor of the day and for the Bank of England Governor to ensure that they can work together in the national interest.
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. This is all about the Governor’s responsibility to do his or her job in managing the Bank, and about the Bank coming to a collective view. The job of the Chancellor of the day is to manage the relationship with the Governor. For all the virtues of the tripartite system that the shadow Chancellor seems to be extolling, I understand that those at the principal level in the tripartite system did not meet for 10 years; perhaps he can correct me, as he was there.
Ed Balls
The tripartite standing committee met every month at the deputy level, from its inception until the crisis. The responsibility for triggering a full meeting of principals was in the hands of the Governor and the head of the FSA. Throughout that entire period either the systemic regulator, the Bank, or the individual firms regulator, the FSA, could have triggered a meeting, but did not. There were two people who could have triggered that, but in the Chancellor’s world there will be only one trigger. That is my concern.
Mr Osborne
The right hon. Gentleman keeps saying there were two people, but there were three principals in the tripartite committee. It was chaired by the Chancellor of the day—the Chancellor whom he advised—but as I understand it, that Chancellor never convened the tripartite regime at the principal level. [Interruption.] I can tell the shadow Chancellor that under the tripartite regime now—that is still the current arrangement—there are meetings on at least a monthly basis with myself, the Governor of the Bank, the chairman of the FSA and so on. In the tripartite system that the shadow Chancellor saw at first hand, the principals, including the Chancellor of the day, never in 10 years—we are not talking about 10 weeks or 10 months—convened a meeting of the principals. The fact that he says that it was entirely the job of the Governor of the Bank of England or the chairman of the FSA to call a meeting, when the chair was the Chancellor, who could have called a meeting at any time he wanted, is very revealing about what went wrong.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
Let me start by striking a rather different tone from that of the Chancellor’s performance in the House this afternoon by setting out where the Opposition agree with what he and the Government are trying to achieve and offering some constructive proposals to tackle the flaws in the legislation before us and help make it a better Bill. Financial stability and the effective regulation of our banking and wider financial services industry are vital for stability, for consumers to save and for businesses to invest. Getting the balance of regulation right is an important task for any Government, especially when hundreds of thousands of jobs depend on the industry. That is a task in which all Governments throughout the world failed during the previous decade.
We can all agree that the irresponsible actions of the banks themselves caused the crisis, but there were major failings in financial regulation, in law, in corporate governance, in procedure and in judgment in America, Asia, throughout Europe and here, too, in Britain. We did not regulate the banks in a tough enough way and stop their gross irresponsibility here in Britain or throughout the world, and after a financial crisis on that global scale we need to learn the right lessons and to put in place the right reforms in order to do what we can to stop such a crisis being repeated.
In that spirit, we welcome aspects of the Bill before us and, in particular, the establishment of the new Financial Policy Committee and the competition and consumer focus of the Financial Conduct Authority, but we are worried that the Bill falls well short of being fit for purpose.
In an excellent report, the Joint Committee that scrutinised the draft Bill stated:
“To be successful reforms will have to change the regulatory culture and philosophy,”
which is
“not something that legislation can guarantee but legislation can influence the culture of a regulator by: setting objectives; allocating and aligning powers and responsibilities; establishing appropriate systems of accountability.”
Despite the changes that the Government made in response to the Joint Committee’s report, the Bill as it stands does not meet the objectives that the Committee set. What the Chancellor proposes in the Bill and in statute is essentially to move from the current tripartite system of regulation to a new quartet system—the Treasury, the Financial Policy Committee, the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority, with the Monetary Policy Committee sitting alongside—with, at best, opaque structures for decision making and accountability under the Bank of England umbrella, albeit now with not two deputy governors but three, and all with overlapping responsibilities.
Unless we get the detail of that quartet system right, we risk delivering a more complex and less transparent system that is harder for the Chancellor and for Parliament to navigate and understand than the current arrangements. Several of those substantial misgivings have been echoed in recent weeks and days by the Treasury Committee and by many City, business and consumer groups. The responsibilities are confused; there is insufficient accountability in the new, more cumbersome system; there is insufficient focus on consumer protection, financial education and exclusion; and, as the CBI has highlighted, there is no objective for the Financial Policy Committee proactively to support growth and employment.
We intend to work with the Government and the Treasury Committee to amend the Bill in Committee to deal with its many shortcomings. To that end, we will not vote in opposition to the Bill in its entirety on Second Reading today; we will see whether we can make progress in Committee and then decide our Third Reading vote only when we have seen whether we have been able to make the progress and the change that is needed in the Bill.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend accept that the crisis was caused in very large part by a complete failure of the auditing industry? If the auditors of all those companies and banks had spotted that worthless bits of paper, claimed as assets, were flooding the world, we might not be where we are now. Does he agree that we need to do something fundamental about auditing?
Charlie Elphicke
Does the shadow Chancellor accept that it was a failure of regulation when, to buy a home, people were lent more money than that home was worth? Was it not wrong to have mortgages of more than 100%, and was that not a failure of regulation?
Ed Balls
The problem was the US sub-prime mortgage market, and that the failure of regulation there rippled around the world. There were failures also of lending and regulation at Northern Rock here in Britain. I do not in any way deny that there were failures here in Britain and failures of regulation, but I do not accept that it was solely a UK failure, because it happened in America, France, Germany, Japan and all around—
Ed Balls
I will make some progress and take both interventions in a minute.
I understand why politically the Chancellor is so keen to blame the structure of UK regulation—the tripartite relationship between the Bank, the Treasury and the FSA. He wants to claim that his particular institutional reforms are the solution, but my advice to him is to be very careful indeed, because this was not a peculiarly British crisis; it was a global crisis. It hit countries with tripartite systems of regulation, quartet systems, twin peaks, more powerful central banks, less powerful central banks and statutory and non-statutory regulators alike, and it was not a failure of regulatory structure, but a collective global failure to see the risks inherent in the structure of the global financial services industry.
We heard from central bankers earlier, but Alan Greenspan, the former chair of the US Federal Reserve and architect of the US system, when asked by The New York Times about his and the world’s understanding and management of risk, said:
“The whole intellectual edifice…collapsed”.
He was right. It was not simply a failure of structure, but a flaw in the way regulators understood the financial system, and that is why the British Bankers Association is right in its submission on the Bill to say that
“we consider that successful regulation depends more on regulatory culture, focus and philosophy than structure.”
Harriett Baldwin
On that very point, I should like to understand where the right hon. Gentleman is coming from in his objections to the Bill. What was his philosophy in terms of separating the supervision of banks from the Bank of England, which has day-to-day responsibility for monitoring that canary in the goldmine—their day-to-day funding operations?
Ed Balls
I am going to come on to explain my analysis. I am not sure I fully understood the question, but I might as time passes.
At its heart, the regulatory failure of the global financial crisis was not a failure of one approach to the institutions of regulation, but a failure of understanding and risk assessment which covered central bankers, regulators and Treasuries throughout the world. That line is not in the Conservative party Whips’ briefing, but it is absolutely true none the less.
Ed Balls
In a second.
And yes, it was a failure shared here in the UK, across the Treasury, the FSA, the Bank of England—and I have to say the then Opposition, too.
Let me remind the House that the legislation to give the Bank of England independence, and to shift from self-regulation to statutory regulation after 1997, for the first time established a Bank of England deputy governor with explicit responsibility for systemic financial stability and with an ex officio seat on the FSA board. As the seeds of the crisis were sown in the years before it, neither the FSA nor the Bank of England nor the Treasury rang the alarm bells, despite meeting every month in the tripartite standing committee.
The Chancellor, in a second breath a moment ago, said that we are now rightly taking the Treasury out of making such decisions, having criticised the Treasury for not triggering a crisis meeting that neither the Bank of England nor the FSA asked for—a point that seemed to be deeply confused. That demonstrates not that structures do not matter, but that there is no evidence from Britain or throughout the world that a different and arguably more complex structure, the new quartet structure before us, would have spotted a crisis that neither the Bank of England, the FSA, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank nor anybody in a regulatory position of responsibility spotted.
Gordon Birtwistle
Will the right hon. Gentleman explain the regulatory things that went on when the previous Prime Minister pushed Lloyds bank into buying HBOS, which was a catastrophe in itself? How much regulation went on then, and how much discussion went on between the Bank of England and the previous Government before it was pushed through by the previous Prime Minister?
Ed Balls
Those were decisions for the Chancellor and the Prime Minister of the day. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a blow-by-blow account or any detail of what happened between the FSA, the Treasury and the Bank of England, because at the time I was the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and was dealing with the failure of the test administrators to deliver the standard assessment tests for year sixes at the end of key stage 2.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Is the shadow Chancellor telling us that he accepts absolutely no part, bearing in mind his key role in the Treasury at the time, in the failure of the financial structures in the banking sector in recent years?
Ed Balls
I have apologised to the country and have asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to do the same. Did this Chancellor ring the alarm bell in the crisis? No, he did not. Did he worry that regulation was insufficiently tough? No; he said in 2006 that financial regulation was
“burdensome, complex and makes cross-border market penetration more difficult”
and that it
“threatens the global competitiveness of the City of London.”
If the hon. Gentleman wants to have a debate about who should apologise and who should accept responsibility, he should look at the evidence and the judgments of the past 10 years. Let us not forget that it was the Conservative party that voted against Bank of England independence and the move from self-regulation of the City by the City to statutory regulation for the first time in this country. It was this Chancellor who personally opposed the rescue of Northern Rock, saying:
“I am not in favour of nationalisation, full stop.”—[Official Report, 19 February 2008; Vol. 472, c. 186.]
It was this Chancellor who opposed the rescue of RBS; who negotiated the flawed and foolish Merlin deal; who refuses to enact proposals on transparency for bonuses of more than £1 million; who resists the reform of remuneration committees; who is selling off Northern Rock at a loss, prompting a National Audit Office investigation; and whose decision to cut the deficit too far and too fast has choked off the recovery and led to us borrowing £158 billion more. We will take no lectures on judgment from this Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Charlie Elphicke
A few moments ago, the shadow Chancellor told the House that he had no involvement in the merger of Lloyds and HBOS. Will he confirm that he was not consulted, that his advice was not sought and that he provided no advice in relation to that matter?
Ed Balls
Yes.
I will set out what needs to be done to turn this bad Bill into a good Bill and to put the public interest, not party politics, in the driving seat in financial regulation. I will set out four objectives that should guide this legislation. The first is stability. We must ensure that we have a system of financial regulation that is robust in good times and in bad times. The second is to protect the taxpayer. We must guarantee that the public purse is protected from irresponsible decision making and wider systemic failures. The third is to be on the side of the consumer. There must be effective regulation, more competition and action on financial education and exclusion. The fourth is to support growth and employment. Let me take each objective in turn.
On stability, provisions to improve the structures for financial regulation and financial stability are at the heart of the Bill. As I have said, we support the FPC and we look forward to debating its powers. We are pleased that the Chancellor has today done a U-turn and decided that the Government will take up the recommendation of the Joint Committee that the macro-prudential tools to be used by the FPC should be properly scrutinised by Parliament. I hope that he will ensure that that happens not just when they are introduced, but when they are subsequently changed and updated. We believe that a new scrutiny committee should be established in this House to play that role. We will propose such an amendment.
On the splitting of the PRA and the FCA from the FSA—I know that these acronyms are hard to keep up with, but this is quite a complex system—it is fair to say that there are advantages and disadvantages. The jury is out. The Chancellor’s decision to put all this new and more complex architecture under the umbrella of the Bank of England, and arguably under the personal direction of its Governor, raises serious questions of accountability and clarity in decision making, as has been highlighted by the Treasury Committee and the Joint Committee.
We share the Treasury Committee’s concerns about accountability within the Bank and accountability to Parliament. As the Committee stated,
“the governance of the Bank needs strengthening and…it needs to be more open about its work. The Bank must be held more clearly to account”.
The Committee has proposed that
“the role of the Court of the Bank of England should be substantially enhanced. It should be transformed into a leaner and more expert Supervisory Board, with the power to conduct retrospective reviews of Bank policies and conduct.”
The Chancellor has said that he does not want to go down that road. He has made some moves, but we think that there is further to go to ensure that there is proper accountability. Again, we will propose reforms in Committee.
It is on the issue of crisis management and the processes for deliberation and decision making within the new, more complex structure, that we have misgivings. The Joint Committee was right to state:
“The powers and responsibilities of the Bank of England and the Treasury during a crisis are key.”
However, the Bill and the memorandum of understanding are deeply confused and opaque, as we have just heard from the Chancellor. We welcome the fact that the Chancellor has accepted the Treasury Committee’s recommendation that the Chancellor should be provided with a discretionary power to direct the Bank when there is a material risk to public funds. The British Bankers Association also welcomed that in its submission, but stated that it was
“unclear that the assignment of powers now proposed is consistent with the strategic division of responsibilities envisaged by the Government, including the proposed power of direction over the Bank.”
Article 20 of the memorandum of understanding exposes the hole. I will quote it in full:
“During a potentially fast-moving crisis, it will become especially important to ensure close and effective coordination so as to maintain coherence in the overall crisis management process. At the heart of institutional coordination during a live crisis will be frequent contact between the Chancellor and the Governor. However, the Chancellor and the Governor may agree to establish ad hoc or standing committees at other levels to support this process.”
Under the Bill, there will be three deputy governors at the Bank, a new Financial Policy Committee, two new sub-agencies at the Bank—the PRA and the FCA—and a new quartet of relationships, in which there are separate statutory responsibilities for the Treasury, the FPC, the PRA and the FCA, as well as for the MPC. Will the Chancellor hear any of the views in a crisis, or pre-crisis, from the statutory office holders? Only, according to the MOU, if the Chancellor and the Governor decide that he should. It states that there will be frequent contact just between the Chancellor and the Governor. It is inevitable that there will be a variety of views and dissenting voices, not only at senior levels within the Bank, but between the different statutory agencies, because those agencies have overlapping and, in certain types of crisis, contradictory objectives. Those different statutory responsibilities are being put under one umbrella organisation—the Bank of England.
Ed Balls
In a second. I will make the argument and the hon. Gentleman can then ask a question.
Senior and responsible figures who hold statutory offices will get to put their views to the Chancellor only if they are on one of the ad hoc or standing committees, which do not yet exist. It seems as though the Governor will decide whether they should exist at all and who should attend them. My advice to the Chancellor is that one cannot just rely on Treasury officials or gossip by the water pump. Unlike many of the Back Benchers who have intervened, I am not seeking to play a party political game; I want him to change the Bill. [Laughter.] Honestly. This is a deeply confused and highly dangerous ambiguity.
Ed Balls
I will give way in a minute. Let me just make the argument, and then the hon. Gentleman, with all his experience of crisis resolution meetings at the Bank, can share his intervention with us.
In the run-up to a crisis or during a crisis itself, having such a high degree of ambiguity in the structure and placing such a concentration of power and access to the Chancellor in the person of the Governor would be highly unstable. If the deputy governor and head of the PRA—a statutory individual, but not the Governor—the head of the FCA or the majority on the FPC believed that there would be a systemic risk from one troubled company without support from public money, the Chancellor must know about it, and in time so must Parliament. They must know about it whether or not the Governor agreed. Whether or not the Governor believed that there was or might be a risk, and whether or not he believed that the moral hazard outweighed the risk, the Chancellor must know about it.
If the Chancellor wants a personalised, twin-peak system with all the responsibilities and accountabilities of the Bank of England located in just one person, the Governor, as is set out in the memorandum of understanding that he has negotiated with the Bank and as it seemed he did at times during his speech, the Bill is flawed. The new system will be unstable and the taxpayer will potentially be more exposed. All the statutory architecture of the FPC, the PRA and the FCA will be for the birds.
If, instead, the new committees and agencies are to have a separate statutory identity with clear and separate purposes that may sometimes conflict, and with leaders who must be properly heard, that must be clarified in the Bill. That was what the Chancellor seemed to suggest at other times in his speech, and the Bill seems to suggest it in places. It must be clarified not just in the memorandum of understanding but in statute.
The Bill sets out clearly the statutory identities of the FCA, the PRA and the FPC, which seems to suggest that the Chancellor intends to move from the tripartite system to a quartet system under the umbrella of the Bank of England—the Treasury, the FPC, the PRA and the FCA. If so, he should say so clearly in the memorandum of understanding and in legislation, for reasons of accountability, financial stability and effective decision making in a crisis. We will table amendments to that effect in Committee.
Matthew Hancock
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is desperate to defend the tripartite structure that he designed—
Matthew Hancock
It is not, by far.
The accusation that the right hon. Gentleman makes undermines his point that the Bill sets out a quadripartite system. It sets out a bipartite system, involving the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor. The fact that it will be delivered through the person of the Governor, who has to manage his own institution with appropriate accountability to court, means that it is a binary system rather than a tripartite one. It will therefore be better at resolving crises at the rushed times when they occur.
Ed Balls
I made it very clear that I was not defending any particular regulatory structure. I do not think the crisis was caused by institutional structures in particular, because other countries with different structures had a crisis as well. We will seek to support the Government in reforming and strengthening the system of financial regulation, including through the addition of the FPC and the new powers of the PRA and FCA. However, all those individual agencies are being given statutory authority in the Bill.
The Bill cannot be setting out a binary or twin-peak system, because there will be the Treasury and the Governor of the Bank of England, then underneath him there will be a deputy governor who is also the head of the PRA, another who is also on the Financial Stability Committee, the head of the FSA—also a statutory office holder—and another deputy governor on the Monetary Policy Committee. The Bill is designed to bring in not a twin-peak system but a quartet system, which will be more complex than a tripartite one.
There may be very good arguments for having a quartet system and for splitting the FSA into the PRA and the FCA, and I support the FPC, but the system will be more complex, not simpler. The Chancellor is trying to fudge the matter by giving the impression in the memorandum of understanding that it will be not a quartet system but a twin-peak system, because things will be sorted out between him and the Governor.
That is not an ad hominem point. Other Chancellors and Ministers from Governments through the ages have known very well that there is an inevitable conflict in financial regulation between the regulator, examining systemic risks from individual firms, and the guardians of the system, who worry about potential systemic risks on the one hand and moral hazard on the other. The Chancellor’s role is as the guardian of the public purse and wider financial stability, so there are different points of view.
My advice to the Chancellor is that to try to subsume all those points of view into a separate institution away from him, without transparency and with multiple and overlapping roles for different statutory office holders, but then say, “I’m only going to deal with the Governor,” is ahistorical, deeply foolish and flawed. If the Chancellor changes and clarifies the Bill, we will be pleased, but at the moment it is a terrible fudge.
Mr George Osborne
I hear the right hon. Gentleman’s criticism of our proposals, but what is his response to what my predecessor says? He has written:
“The whole system depended on the chairman of the FSA, the Governor of the Bank and the Chancellor seeing things in exactly the same way. The problem was that, in September 2007, we simply did not see things in the same way.”
My predecessor, who went through the banking crisis, says that he was dealing with a system in which differences of opinion were not accommodated. The system could not adapt to them, and there was no power of override. What is the shadow Chancellor’s response to my predecessor’s criticism?
Ed Balls
My response to the current Chancellor, who has not yet dealt with such a crisis, is “Welcome to the real world.” In reality, there will be times, as there have been, when the regulator, and potentially the deputy governor for systemic stability, will say, “We are really worried about the potential read-across from this particular large institution to the financial system more widely.” However, the Governor will say that for reasons of moral hazard and the desire not to set false precedent, he does not believe funds should be provided.
As the Chancellor has said, it is really hard when there is a disagreement between the regulator and the prudential systemic overseer or the Governor. The Chancellor has elected to take the power to make the decision in those circumstances. I agree with that strengthening of his powers, but—
Ed Balls
The Chancellor does not listen. He wants to play this game so much that he does not hear. I agree with the increase in his powers. He is right to take them, but he cannot use them unless the Governor comes to him and says, “I fear a crisis may be building,” having made a judgment about moral hazard outwith the views of the heads of the PRA, the FCA and the FPC.
In the structure set out in the Bill, the statutory office holders will be formally kept out of the room under the Chancellor’s own memorandum of understanding, which is foolish. I understand why it has happened—it will be easier to negotiate. In all the years when previous Chancellors wanted clarity, it was hard to negotiate. However, negotiating the wrong clarity in a way that keeps information away from the Chancellor is not stabilising and in the public interest but destabilising, opaque and against the public interest. The Chancellor should take some advice from people who have seen that not working and ensure that he hears the views of the people to whom he is giving statutory responsibility in the Bill. That is my very strong advice, and I hope he will listen to it.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
The shadow Chancellor is telling us something illuminating—that if a Chancellor does not want to listen, no system will have any impact at all. Under the last Government, siren voices started in 2002, and the then Chancellor refused to listen. We had a systemic deficit problem, and again he did not want to listen. The shadow Chancellor has been through all this, so would he advise the current Chancellor to listen more than the last Chancellor did during the crisis?
Ed Balls
My very clear advice to the Chancellor is that when he gives people a clear statutory responsibility for a particular function and legislates for three deputy governors who are the heads of individual agencies, he should also design his crisis resolution and decision-making procedures so that his experts are in the room and he can hear the array of their views. The idea that it is better for the Chancellor to require the Bank to resolve such issues internally and come to him with one voice—one Governor, one decision maker—is a flawed structure of regulation. The point, however, is that that is not what the Bill intends. It intends for the FCA and PRA to be important institutions, in which case the Chancellor should get them in the room.
Mr Robinson
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the further decision to install the Governor for eight years will make the inherent difficulty of dealing with only one person more difficult?
Ed Balls
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but to be honest I do not have strong views on that. The reality is that there was not cross-party support or support more widely in civic society for Bank of England independence when we established it. The Conservatives voted against it. In those circumstances, it would have been difficult for the then Government to pass legislation for one eight-year term—there would have been a lot of opposition to the idea of giving one unelected individual such power for an eight-year term. This Bill moves us not only from a four-year to an eight-year term, but gives one individual massively more power than they ever had. That is what concerns me.
Matthew Hancock
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again. Does not his argument—that we cannot have an umbrella regulator under which inevitable tensions are resolved, and that we must instead have separate organisations—show exactly the thinking that led to the problems in the tripartite system, under which responsibilities were segregated and separated and problems fell between stools? The FSA and the Bank were told that one was to look at the regulation of individual banks and the other at the macro-economy, and never the twain shall meet. That is precisely the problem that needs to be addressed.
Ed Balls
The Chancellor referred to his years of thinking about this legislation. I am afraid that his former adviser demonstrates the kind of muddled thinking that has got the Chancellor into this difficulty.
I am not saying that the tripartite system is the best one. I am quite happy to go along with the shift to the quartet system—I can see the advantages of the FPC and the split of the FCA and the PRA. I am not worried because individual statutory agencies will be under the umbrella of the Bank of England; I am worried because the deputy governor and head of the PRA, who has a clear responsibility, is not part of the decision-making process. That is what I am worried about. I want the MOU to say that at the heart of the system—in pre-crisis and crisis—there will be a “clear view” group, in which the Governor and his key deputies, who will have separate and sometimes contradictory statutory responsibilities, come together with the Chancellor to make the decision.
Even if the Chancellor—this is not an ad hominem point—has the umbrella of the Bank of England and the quartet system, he should want to hear from the person whom he appoints on a very large salary and in law to be the head of the PRA. What I do not understand is why that would not be written into the MOU. Actually, I sort of do understand. There is a history in the Bank of England of the Bank equalling the Governor of the Bank—of wanting to personalise the appointment—as the Chancellor has described. However, we cannot personalise something as complex as the proposed system. It is not just that the system is complicated; there are also tensions and differences of view.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) is quite right that it is hard to operate a tripartite system in which there are different views, but those differences will not be avoided by burying them under the table and pretending they do not exist. Had that happened at key moments in the previous crisis, the wrong decisions would have been taken.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the shadow Chancellor for giving way once more. The Chancellor’s plan is for the financial and prudential regulation buck always to stop with the Bank of England. The shadow Chancellor has concerns about moral hazard on the part of the Governor, which suggests that he is not as strong a fan of the independence of the Bank as he has previously made out. Should we not trust a Governor of the Bank of England to work effectively with the Chancellor?
Ed Balls
The hon. Gentleman does not understand that the buck does not stop with the Governor of the Bank of England, but with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, in the end, is the guarantor of the public purse and taxpayers’ money, and of the wider stability of the system.
If the Governor comes to the Chancellor and says, “In my view, and based on the views of my deputies, our collective view is to intervene,” the Chancellor has the power to do so. Rightly, the Chancellor has given himself the power in the Bill to override the Governor if the latter says we should not act. The concerning situation, which I am trying to explain—the hon. Gentleman does not quite get it—is that there will be different views within the overarching Bank of England, because it will be huge, with different, overlapping and sometimes contradictory statutory responsibilities for systemic stability, prudential regulation of individual firms and managing risks to consumers, let alone monetary policies.
In those circumstances, my strong advice to the Chancellor, with whom the buck stops, is that he should not allow the decision to be made in the Bank of England. He should not allow the Governor to say, “I know you want to act and that you want to us to act. Thanks very much, but I’m the Governor, and I don’t think we should.” We should not allow the Governor to tell the Chancellor, “The Bank does not propose action.” I would not put myself in that position.
The idea that such a situation is okay because the Chancellor will have heard before the meeting—from Treasury officials or on the grapevine—what those other office holders want is unbelievably naive. We are talking about the Bank of England’s legislative responsibilities and the statutory power of the office holder. In that key meeting of only the Chancellor and the Governor, the Chancellor cannot say, “I’m sorry, Governor, but other people take a different view from you.” That is not how it works.
Shall I move on, Madam Deputy Speaker? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] That is a very important argument to which we will return in Committee.
On Europe, that problem of complexity is mentioned in the Treasury Committee report, which states that there is
“a risk that the single UK regulatory voice in some cases is weakened by the fact that two or more organisations will share the representational role in the various international regulatory committees.”
The Chancellor has proposed a new committee, which is welcome, but I urge him to look harder at that arrangement. The Opposition will table amendments on that in Committee.
Let me move on quickly, because it is important to get other things on the record on Second Reading. As I have said, on consumers, the Opposition welcome the recognition of the need for a single regulator for all retail financial services, but we will highlight a number of concerns in Committee. In particular, we want to ensure that the FCA has the powers it needs to require providers of financial services to understand its fiduciary duties.
On disciplinary action, the Joint Committee has recommended a requirement to consult before disclosing the fact that a warning notice has been issued. We think the Government are wrong to reject that recommendation. That transparency should be in the Bill.
The Joint Committee has also recommended that the FCA should be given concurrent powers alongside the Office of Fair Trading to make market investigation references to the Competition Commission. We do not understand why the Treasury has rejected that.
We are also disappointed that the Government have not used the Bill to bring forward the Vickers recommendation for a review of progress on competition. We propose having one in 2013, rather than in 2015, as Vickers proposed, not least because the Lloyds divestiture has so far not produced the strong, effective challenger that we sought.
The Chancellor says that he is in favour of financial education in schools and the Prime Minister says he is reviewing it, but they vetoed that proposal when a Bill was before the House. There is cross-party support on financial education. The all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people is the largest such group and will propose an amendment for statutory financial education in schools for all young people.
The Opposition are worried that the Government are allowing the banks to go backwards on financial exclusion, with charges for basic bank accounts being increased in the case of Barclays, and with new charges on basic bank account holders using automated teller machines in RBS and Lloyds. We want to strengthen the obligation on the banks to produce a universal service for all retail banks. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) will no doubt push us to ensure that the Government agree to our amendments to give new powers to the FCA to restrain the ability of firms to charge ultra-high interest rates for prolonged periods.
On growth and employment, the CBI was right to say in its submission that
“the Bill should ensure that the new regulatory authorities have a specific objective to focus on—and support—economic growth.”
As it points out, the macro-economic tools used by the FPC could by their nature have a significant impact. The CBI says that the FPC should be required in statute to act
“in a way that is consistent with promoting the medium and long-term growth of the economy”.
The Joint Committee also proposed a strengthening of the growth obligation for the FPC, and we will propose amendments to that effect. I hope that the Government will look at this issue again, because it is important, not least for the supply of credit to small and growing businesses. Even the British Bankers Association says:
“We would suggest that the legislation underpinning the FPC should specify that its objective is to maintain a sustainable supply of credit to the economy”.
Bank of England figures show a £10 billion fall in lending to small businesses, and in November the Chancellor said that his new credit easing scheme would relieve constraints in the supply of bank lending in the short term. The short term is becoming the long term, because there is still no sign of that credit easing scheme. No wonder, with small business lending down and bonuses high, the Merlin deal is looking rather tawdry. At least the Chancellor has recognised that executive pay needs to be covered in the Bill, but as the Institute of Chartered Accountants said in its briefing,
“at the moment the Bill is drafted too broadly to be effective in encouraging proportional executive pay.”
We will look at amendments in Committee and tomorrow the House will have the chance to debate the Opposition’s call for a repeat of the bank bonus tax to provide 100,000 jobs for young people.
This is a badly drafted Bill. On stability, there are gaping holes in decision making and accountability. On protecting taxpayers, there are flaws in the advice the Chancellor will receive. For consumers, there are flaws in the powers for referral to the Competition Commission and a worrying lack of action on financial education and exclusion. On growth and employment, there is a gaping gap that must be filled. We will not oppose Second Reading, but we want big changes in Committee. Otherwise, to protect stability, taxpayers, consumers, growth and jobs, we will have to vote against the Bill on Third Reading.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ed Balls Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Danny Alexander
It is a very good question. We made that change, which has had an effect on public service pensions, for good reasons. The change has been made in many private sector organisations—most recently, I read, in the Labour party’s pension scheme. The Opposition’s attacks on the move being ideologically driven are belied by the decisions they have had to make because of the deficit their party is running.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
With the Chancellor away in Brussels in his new role as an observer at European Finance Ministers meetings, it is nice to welcome the Chief Secretary to his new starring role at Treasury questions. I am sure he will know, although he has not told the House, that in the last 15 minutes the International Monetary Fund has announced that it is once again downgrading its growth forecast for the UK economy, saying that action is now needed to support economic activity in Britain. With unemployment rising too, continued pay restraint is now inevitable, but it must be done fairly, so let me ask the Chief Secretary this. In 2010, he promised a £250 rise for every one of the 1.7 million public sector workers paid less than £21,000 a year. Can he tell the House how many of those low-paid public sector workers actually got the £250 rise?
Danny Alexander
It is good to see the shadow Chancellor after the Christmas recess. Many of us who missed the chance to go to a panto over Christmas have enjoyed the Opposition’s pantomime economic policy changes. It is not clear whether today the right hon. Gentleman supports cuts or opposes them, but this is one show that will run and run. On the point about public sector pay, for all work forces under central Government control, the £250 was paid in full.
Ed Balls
Bluster. The right hon. Gentleman is worse than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and there was no mention of the IMF growth downgrade. The answer is that less than half of those low-paid public sector workers got the rise. Almost a million did not get the £250 increase that they were promised by the Treasury. Last week, we urged the Chancellor to ask the pay review bodies to make the 1% cap fair this time, with restraint at the top, so that we can have pay rises at the bottom. Have the Chief Secretary or the Chancellor written to the pay review bodies? Will they guarantee a fair way forward on pay restraint, or will we just get more broken promises from this Chief Secretary to the Treasury?
Danny Alexander
Of course, the people to whom the right hon. Gentleman refers are local authority employees. Many local authorities did pay the £250, including some Liberal Democrat-controlled local authorities. I am not aware of any Labour local authorities paying the £250, so perhaps he should look within his party before deciding which side of the House was most effective at ensuring that the benefit was paid directly to the lowest-paid. Of course, we have had to take the difficult decision to continue pay restraint, with a 1% cap for the following two years. The pay review bodies will be very involved in making recommendations for those two years, starting, of course, in the parts of the civil service that come out of the pay freeze earliest. The IMF has repeatedly made the point that the Government are right to stick to their fiscal consolidation strategy, and we will.