Charter for Budget Responsibility

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Osborne]

Will the hon. Gentleman, who has experience at the Treasury, confirm that Labour’s economic policy is to borrow more?

[Mr Robinson]

The Chancellor is asking us to be honest and state our position. Will he tell us what he said today? A few moments ago, he clearly said—we can all check Hansard tomorrow—that he had not gone any slower on reducing the deficit. He said that word for word. We are simply inviting him to clarify his remark—to tell us it is not correct, that we must have misheard, or that he will correct Hansard. Whatever he does, will he clarify his position? He is clearly totally out of order.

[Mr Osborne]

The hon. Gentleman can check Hansard now if he likes. I was clear that we stuck to our spending plans—we did not go faster, we did not go slower—and reduced the deficit by a half, and we are going to carry on with the job.

EU Budget (Surcharge)

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about the quality of the statistics. It was raised by the European Court of Auditors last week; it was also made forcefully by the Dutch Finance Minister at ECOFIN. The key point is that we can examine the numbers, and if there are errors we will get money repaid to us at the end of next year.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Can the Chancellor explain why the EU Commissioner said on 27 October that the UK would benefit in any event from the rebate that was due? Also—this is at the heart of the problem—what evidence does the right hon. Gentleman have to suggest to the House, other than in a gross act of deception worthy more of Goebbels than of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I know from visits with my hon. Friend to the manufacturing businesses of Dudley that he is a powerful supporter of their interests in growing those businesses and taking on more people. Unemployment in Dudley has fallen by 19 % since he started to represent that town. I welcome his support. Together let us make sure that we have a business-led recovery and a recovery in the west midlands and that we reject the anti-business approach of the Labour party.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

The whole House has heard the Chancellor proclaim over the last three years that when the recovery comes—as it will—it will be a different kind of recovery, based on investment and, indeed, investment-led. Is it not the case that business lending is stagnating, if not falling, that capital investment in the much-heralded infrastructure plan is 7.4% lower than it should be, and that what we are actually seeing is an economic-pick-up based on consumer spending? Does that not send a warning signal to the Chancellor? Instead of boasting about the situation, he should be doing something about it.

[Mr Osborne]

Given his experience, the hon. Gentleman must surely consider the growth of the car industry in Coventry, and in the west midlands as a whole, to be as strong as any growth that he has seen in his career. We are exporting cars at a rate at which we have not exported them since the early 1970s. Of course we want to see more business investment and more exports, but what we are seeing now is a rebalancing of the economy. The private sector is growing, and the number of jobs is increasing throughout the country—and that includes the west midlands, an area in which the number of jobs fell during the boom.

Incidentally, given his business experience, I suspect that the hon. Gentleman does not support for one moment the proposals announced by the shadow Chancellor over the past week.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I will write to the hon. Lady on her specific point, to which I do not currently have an answer. However, more broadly, the Government are open to ways in which to make the VAT system and the business tax system simpler. We have created the Office of Tax Simplification, which has specifically looked at the burden on small businesses. I will take what she says as a submission.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I wonder whether I could yank the Chancellor out of his complacency for one moment. Is he aware that, in the year since the funding for lending scheme was announced, lending to small and medium-sized businesses is, on the most recent figures, negative? Is he aware that that is symptomatic of a broader failure on investment under his reign?

[Mr Osborne]

Gross lending is up under the funding for lending scheme, which we operate jointly with the Bank of England. We are aware of the specific challenge of small business finance, which is why, just before the summer, with the previous Governor, we launched a focus of the scheme on small business funding.

The hon. Gentleman says investment is failing under this Government. He is an MP from the midlands. Given his personal history, I would have thought he would welcome the announcement by Jaguar Land Rover of the 1,700 jobs being created in Solihull. As he well knows, four years ago there was a choice of closing either Castle Bromwich or Solihull. Not only are both open, but a huge investment in the new technology of ultra-light cars is coming along with 1,700 new jobs. The hon. Gentleman is a midlands MP and used to work for the company, so I would have thought he would welcome that.

Spending Review

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Britain has got to earn its way in the world, and that is about increasing our earnings as well as dealing with our expenditure. In the Budget, we set out a number of tax changes, such as the new employment allowance, which I know he strongly supports and which will help small firms by wiping out the first £2,000 of national insurance, taking a third of those firms out of national insurance. We have made a series of other tax changes to promote investment, and where we had to make tough spending choices, I have chosen in this spending round to prioritise things that will help businesses to create jobs.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is the Chancellor not aware that he has been in post for three years now, that he owns these policies and that their failure is his responsibility? All the empty rhetorical questions directed at the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor will not airbrush away the failings on growth, living standards and borrowings. Is it not time he faced up to that and changed the policies that have failed so far?

[Mr Osborne]

I tell you what has happened while this Government have been in office. First, borrowing has come down—[Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor says it has gone up, but the problem is that if this really is his maths, the country would be in very serious trouble if he ever got himself back into Downing street. We were borrowing £157 billion a year under Labour and now we are set to borrow £108 billion in the coming year—£118 billion if we remove the asset purchase facility transfer. So borrowing has come down.

Secondly, more than 1 million jobs have been created. Thirdly, we can look around the world and see that this country is seen to have got its act together and is making the big reforms we need to education, welfare and the like. That is why we are absolutely determined to win the global race and people see us as a country capable of winning that race.

Economic Policy

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We are debating the decision of Moody’s credit rating agency, which said in its market notice on Friday that reduced political commitment to fiscal consolidation could lead to further downgrades of the United Kingdom. That is the verdict of the ratings agency. The verdict of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent body, is that Labour plans would add about £200 billion extra to borrowing. That is the view of independent bodies about the Labour party’s economic policy.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is the Chancellor aware that the whole country is getting progressively more sick of the mantra that there is no alternative, which he parades as a policy, and that for as long as he perseveres with these counter-productive policies there is no hope? In particular, until he can get his national programme for investment in infrastructure under way—even the director general of the CBI said that he had totally failed to deliver on that, and the whole country and the whole House agrees—he is failing as a Chancellor.

[Mr Osborne]

Infrastructure spending—actual money being spent on infrastructure—is higher in this Parliament than it was in the previous Parliament. That is, I am afraid, the simple fact produced and audited by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. We have increased capital spending compared with the plans that we inherited, and under this Government in this Parliament it is higher as a percentage of GDP than under the previous Labour Government. That is what has happened.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I agree with my hon. Friend. In East Anglia, where his constituency is, we have invested more than £280 million in life sciences, and are providing infrastructure by, for example, upgrading the A11. He is completely right that we should look at new forms of financing. We have introduced tax increment financing, as he suggests. From April this year, all authorities will, within prudential limits, have unfettered access to standard tax increment financing.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is the Chancellor aware that Mr John Cridland of the CBI said yesterday that the Government have a national infrastructure plan but were just incompetent at delivering it? That incompetence, which characterises the Government, is leading to a situation in which the Government will have achieved, by the end of this Parliament, about half the level of national infrastructure investment of 2008, which will cripple the competitiveness of the British economy. What is the Chancellor going to do about it?

[Mr Osborne]

It is an inconvenient truth to the hon. Gentleman that public investment as a percentage of GDP is higher on average in this Parliament than under the entire last Labour Government. That is because this Government are making the difficult choices on welfare, which Labour Members oppose, to save money and reduce the deficit, and to spend more, for example, on roads than they did during their period in office. That is the right priority for the taxpayer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I say to the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee that we will set out at the Budget—of course, he will want to scrutinise this carefully—a new control total for the off-balance sheet liabilities of PFI. We already now publish the whole-of-Government accounts so that people can see the liabilities built up under the previous Administration. The country now has more than £280 billion of PFI debt, of which only £40 billion has been paid off, so he is absolutely right to hold our feet to the fire to ensure that we properly account for this and remove perverse incentives in Whitehall. We want the private sector investing with us in public services, however, so it is important that we have the right regime.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

The House will be pleased that the Chancellor is not trying to get rid of PFI, but trying to improve it in those areas where it can be improved. What does he mean, however, when he says that the Government will take a stake in the projects? How will he do that? It will need more than a director on the board, which I heard him say.

[Mr Osborne]

We propose to take a public sector share and put in an equity stake on behalf of the public sector. It will be a minority stake, but it means that we will share in the upside, and, of course, in order to keep an eye on our investment, we will have a director on the board representing the public sector, which was not the case in previous projects.

Bank of England

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Monday 26th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

These days, of course, the House of Commons can choose what it wants to debate through the Backbench Business Committee, while the Opposition are always able to table motions, too. I do not think it would be sensible to try to divide the House on something the appointment of the Governor of the Bank of England. One of the advantages of the Bank of England, as I was saying to the shadow Chancellor, is that there is an agreement that it should be kept out of party politics and the like; we have achieved that today. Mr Carney said clearly in my discussions with him that he did not want to talk about British economic policy at any great length at his press conference today or, indeed, while he continues as the Governor of the Bank of Canada, but that he did want to talk at length to my hon. Friend’s Committee. At a mutually convenient time, he will do that.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is the Chancellor aware that this may be the first occasion under his chancellorship at which we can wholeheartedly welcome his decision? I hope he will extend to Mark Carney, the prospective Governor, a warm welcome to these shores. We also hope that he will get his citizenship before his term of office expires.

[Mr Osborne]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support. Perhaps we could bottle this cross-party consensus and use it on future occasions, but I doubt it.

Mark Carney will apply for British citizenship, but he is absolutely clear that he should do so in the normal way—the same way in which anyone else would apply for it. One thing that I have learned from the last Government is that Ministers of the Crown should be very careful about becoming involved in citizenship decisions.

Jobs and Growth

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We have to have public sector pensions that are affordable. The truth is that people are living longer in retirement, which is a good thing, and that if we want to maintain generous pension provision for firefighters and others we have to make reforms that mean the country can afford that. So, the answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is yes, and we have been in a long and good negotiation with the Fire Brigades Union and others on those reforms. As I have said, we seek to make public sector pensions affordable and it is pretty striking if the tone of interventions from the Opposition is going to be that we do not have support for this far-reaching reform that will put public service pensions on a sustainable footing. Opposition Members are going to have to ask themselves whether they speak in this House for their tax-paying constituents or for the unions that sponsor them.

We look forward to hearing, in the wind-ups, from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), whom we welcome to his place. Perhaps he will tell us what Labour’s attitude to these Bills will be. We are sorry that he has been removed from his role as Labour’s policy chief. He is yet another Labour politician who has found that their career takes a knock when they try to tell their party some hard truths. He did extremely well in his new job of handing notes to the shadow Chancellor as he spoke today, but there was a time when he wrote his own notes rather than just handing them. There was the time when he wrote that note saying, “I’m sorry, there’s no money left”, but his party’s only message is to spend and borrow more. To be fair to him, he is the politician who tried to tell Labour to get serious about welfare reform and about dealing with the deficit. He was famous in my Department for the very precise memo he sent to civil servants on how to prepare his morning cappuccino and his afternoon espresso. How ironic that what did for him was his attempt to get Labour to wake up and smell the coffee. [Laughter.] I have to say that it was quite late last night when I thought of that one.

Who replaces the right hon. Gentleman as policy chief? The new policy chief for the Labour party is the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas). We did some research on how he might approach the job and we found these illuminating remarks from a few weeks ago:

“What interests me is not policy as such; rather the search for political sentiment, voice and language; of general definition within a national story. Less ‘The Spirit Level’, more ‘What is England’.”

Well, that is clear then. Perhaps when the Opposition find out “What is England” they will let us all have the answer. The striking thing is that there is no policy from the Opposition at a time when tough decisions need to be taken about our country’s future and when far-reaching reforms need to be made to secure its prosperity.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

The Chancellor is back on politics, where he is happiest. He got through some parts of the Queen’s Speech in about three paragraphs or sentences, I think. On policy, why will he not listen for once and do what we are saying? Why will he not extend to all small companies taking on new workers the national insurance discount, which is nowhere near being taken up yet, instead of dismissing that suggestion? It is a good idea, so why does he not take it on? Why does he not extend his initial idea and make it effective for once?

[Mr Osborne]

First, as I have said, we have used the money available to us in the balanced Budget to cut the small companies tax rate, which the hon. Gentleman wanted to go up. [Interruption.] He says, “Additional to that”; Labour’s policy was to increase the small companies tax rate. We have not done that. We have cut national insurance across the board for low and middle-paid employees by getting rid of Labour’s jobs tax—that applies whether they are employed in small or larger companies—and we have frozen business rates for smaller companies. So, we have done all those things, but I completely agree that we need to do more to help smaller companies by reducing the red tape burden on them and by helping to get credit to them. That is what the national loan guarantee scheme that was launched at the end of March is doing right now.

IMF

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Yes, I can. IMF loans are repaid and they always have been in the past. No country has lost money giving resources to the IMF and such loans are repaid with interest. Indeed, if I can find the quotation—[Interruption.] It is worth waiting for, because it is from the shadow Chancellor. When the shadow Chancellor was in the Treasury, he said that IMF lending to

“countries is invariably repaid with interest.”

That is what he said in 2003. I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that loans to the IMF are made to the most creditworthy institution in the world and are repaid.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Last summer, the Financial Secretary, I think, said that alongside a quota increase, contributions under the new agreement to borrow would be reduced. Can the Chancellor tell the House whether they have been?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I have been very encouraged to hear about the success of companies in my hon. Friend’s constituency, including the two that he mentioned. We will provide further details later this year on the R and D “above the line” tax credit, on which we have listened to representations from industry and Members of Parliament. In the vicinity of my hon. Friend’s constituency, we also have the enterprise zone i54, which will start up in April. More generally, this is a week when 20,000 new jobs have been announced by Tesco and we have heard the great news that Nissan will produce a new car in the UK. There are some encouraging developments in the British economy.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is the Chancellor not aware that his measures are not working? In the last quarter for which we have figures, set against a 67,000 drop in public sector employment there was a welcome but very modest increase of only 5,000 jobs in the private sector. Why not do something bold and positive in the Budget, such as taking one of our proposals, rather than rejecting it out of pride, to expand the national insurance holiday to cover all small companies that take on new employees, rather than just the relatively small number of new small companies?

[Mr Osborne]

I have noticed in the Budget representations from Labour Members that they are always very good at suggesting things we can spend money on but never have any ideas about how to save money, despite leaving us with the largest budget deficit in our peacetime history. They are all over the place: one week it is a tax cut, the next it is a spending increase. The truth is that we need economic credibility. The budget deficit is coming down but it is still far too high. Of course, we will not have the unfunded giveaways that got this country into a mess under the previous Labour Government.

Financial Services Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[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 Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I hate to intrude on this Socratic dialogue between the Chancellor and my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), but can the Chancellor not see that in these critical decisions there will be differences? I do not draw a direct comparison with the military, where the Chief of the Defence Staff has a right of appeal or a direct line of communication with the Prime Minister, but in these critical decisions it is not enough for a hard-headed, narrow-minded or too-forceful Government to insist on a point of view. A release valve is needed to reach a balanced judgment, and the No. 2s in all the crucial areas should have the right to come straight to the Chancellor. Good foresight and good judgment are involved in that.

[Mr Osborne]

The other point that I would make—the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is reminding me of it—is that the Treasury sits on all those committees as a non-voting member. It is in on all the discussions, with a Treasury official sitting in on and understanding the debate.

Global Economy

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we are taking more than 1 million low-paid people out of tax altogether, implementing the policy that the Liberal Democrats put forward at the general election. I also agree that what he describes is a vindication not just of the economic decisions we took, but of the political decisions we took. Let us reflect on the fact that a year ago we had a hung Parliament—the first time since the 1970s—and we formed a coalition Government. That was a difficult decision for both political parties involved, but given the political weakness in some other countries, which is driving a lot of the market concern about those countries, the political strength of the Government in Britain is a tribute to both those political parties, which set aside their political differences and came together in the national interest.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor—who persists in this bewildering implausibility that his plan is working—please tell the House by how much this financial year he will fall short of his target for deficit reduction?

[Mr Osborne]

The important difference between the hon. Gentleman's time in the Treasury and my time in the Treasury now is that we have the independent Office for Budget Responsibility making those announcements. It is not the Chancellor who makes those announcements from the Dispatch Box, for the very simple reason that by the end of the last Government, those Treasury pronouncements were so discredited that they were believed by absolutely no one. One of the important early decisions that we took to restore credibility in British public finances was the creation of the independent OBR, which makes those announcements.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The simple reason is that we have a credible deficit reduction plan. Even though we inherited a deficit higher than Portugal’s, our interest rates are closer to those of Germany. Indeed, the spread over Bunds—the difference between German and UK interest rates—has come down substantially over the last year, even though that gap has gone up in France, Spain and other European countries. The real monetary stimulus being provided to the economy by those low interest rates is anchored in the credible deficit reduction plan.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

May I take up the point made by the Chancellor about the outstanding speech made by my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor? Why does the Chancellor have this touching, childlike faith in the views of the IMF when it got things dead wrong on the exchange rate mechanism, which it unfortunately imposed on this country the previous time it had the misfortune to have a Tory Government?

[Mr Osborne]

It is normal for Finance Ministers to pay some attention to what the IMF says, but there we go. The last time we had a Labour Government, we had to turn to the IMF for help; I am trying to avoid that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I have a copy of the hon. Gentleman’s document here. He has some excellent ideas on promoting enterprise and entrepreneurs. He will have to wait until tomorrow to see how we respond to them.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

T8. Can the Chancellor not see that the figures —current and forecast—for inflation, unemployment, growth, borrowing and even the deficit are all way off his target? Can he not see that the plan is not working, or is it a sad case of him not wanting to see?

[Mr Osborne]

What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is this: we inherited a record budget deficit and there was no credible plan to deal with it. We put a plan in place and it is supported by the international community. The result of all this is that we have interest rates that are closer to Germany’s, despite having been left a deficit that is bigger than Portugal’s or Greece’s.

Banking

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor confirm that, as a result of his Herculean efforts in this struggle with the banks, the names of the traders who are still going to be awarded the greatest bonuses will not be made public?

[Mr Osborne]

The disclosure will be of those senior executives not on the board, but in the Walker proposals there was not even a proposal to identify individual salaries. So it is the senior executives who will be identified.

Loans to Ireland Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Robinson and George Osborne

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I will briefly take a couple of interventions.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I have listened with interest to what the Chancellor has been saying. I appreciate the measured way in which he has presented his proposals and, indeed, the cross-party support for them, and I have no wish to disturb that support. However, will the Chancellor think again about two aspects of what he has said?

First, there is the question of the terms on which the loan will be repaid. Given that the deal is currently quite advantageous to the Irish in terms of interest rate security and, indeed, the standing of the loan, would it not be possible to negotiate the option for the UK to be repaid in sterling should there be an interesting movement in the sterling-euro exchange rate, which is quite likely?

Secondly, given that the right hon. Gentleman rather alarmingly says that this might not be the end of the matter, and that therefore he has left the way open, through just the affirmative procedure, for more substantial loans—I think I understand the situation correctly from what he says—to be made to Ireland, will he look at making such action subject to new legislation in the House, which would attract more attention and scrutiny from this body?

[Mr Osborne]

We are being repaid in sterling, so that answers the hon. Gentleman’s first point. I have already dealt with the second point on a number of occasions, but I shall just point out that the effect would be exactly the same. Whether I brought to the House legislation or used the affirmative procedure, I would have to get the support of Members, so materially the impact would be exactly the same: the House of Commons would be able to stop such action taking place. I should stress that I have absolutely no intention of doing so at the moment, and there is protection.