European Council

Debate between George Eustice and Andrea Leadsom

Thursday 8th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank my hon. Friend. In truth, right now, I genuinely believe that the Prime Minister has to focus his effort on creating the best solution for Britain, and that is what he is doing. As for all the demands for referendums, the fact that I am confused about what my hon. Friend has been saying, although I am quite close to these issues, demonstrates that other people will doubtless also be confused. The demands are seen as our party, at least, trying to cause trouble for the Prime Minister. For that reason alone, now is the time to get behind the Prime Minister, who has promised the British people that he will defend our interests.

Let me come to why defending the City is the key priority at the moment. People talk about renegotiating EU directives that have already been implemented, but as we have found as part of the Fresh Start project work, that is real spaghetti; it is extraordinarily difficult to unwind existing, implemented policies. I am a very practical person, and the best approach in terms of doability is to look at what has not yet been implemented and what the biggest threat to Britain is. On those two counts, there is no doubt that we should focus on financial services.

Financial services account for 11% of Britain’s tax take each year—about £50 billion. It employs nearly 2 million people; it is our biggest export; and it creates a huge positive trade surplus. Given that we have a big overall trade deficit, we would be looking at a far worse trade balance without financial services. Added to that is the fact that the potential for the future growth of financial services is all outside the eurozone; it is in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—and America and Asia. That is where the potential lies. Yet, before the financial crisis, Britain was in a strong position in creating an EU financial services single market. We were influential. That was all about deregulation, open access to markets, growth and jobs. Britain did very well out of that and so, by the way, did the rest of Europe. Other eurozone countries did extraordinarily well, because the City was the entry-point to European financial services markets. That benefited us all.

Since the financial crisis, however, the agenda has changed. Britain has rightly changed its regulatory environment by greatly increasing controls, the closeness of supervision and the requirements for capital, liquidity and so on. The EU’s goal has been more to ban what it does not like: “Let’s reduce financial activity; we will constrain, prevent and reduce what is going on.” Nowhere in the EU treaties is there any talk of prudential decisions that the EU might make that would go against the fundamental commitment to single markets and growth opportunities, so the 49 EU directives and other proposals on financial services coming down the track are already in breach of the spirit of the EU treaties, which are all about creating better markets and more access.

I want to mention a couple of those matters in particular. First, on the financial transactions tax, people may think, “They will never do it; it would be cutting off their nose to spite their face and the business will simply go elsewhere.” Actually, however, I think many people in the EU are determined to do it, because they do not want the business. They think that Anglo-Saxon light-touch regulation and the success of financial services are partly to blame for the eurozone crisis. They are quite wrong, but that is where they lay the blame, so they would consider a financial transactions tax that would drive business abroad to be a good thing. To anyone who thinks, “They would not do it,” I would say that they would if they had the opportunity. Of course, that would be disastrous for Britain. It would not be a tax on bankers; it would be a tax on pensioners, investors and savers, because it would go straight to the bottom line of every investment portfolio. If anyone said that it would serve bankers right, I would reply that it would affect not bankers but savers. I could not support that.

Secondly, a slightly unbelievable idea has been proposed in the eurozone that a clearing house with more than 5% of its turnover denominated in euros should relocate to the eurozone. That would be daylight robbery and steal our business, and I am glad that the British Government are already challenging it in the European Court of Justice. Where in the single market treaties, which are all about growth and jobs, does that appear? How would it support British growth and jobs? It would not. I am extremely concerned about the tone and extent of EU directives coming down the track. They are not yet implemented; but unfortunately, under QMV, they could be implemented without Britain’s say-so.

[George Eustice]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the Prime Minister is right to prioritise the financial services directives in the negotiations. Is she aware that Open Europe has today published a poll of City institutions showing that more than 60% of them believe that the burden of regulation coming down the tracks from the European Union outweighs the benefits of the single market?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I have not seen the poll—I have been looking forward to seeing it—and I am not surprised by what my hon. Friend says. Although, as I have said, the treaties are all about expanding markets, growth and opportunities, some of the unintended consequences of EU policies have been the complete opposite of that, and never more so than in financial services. I think that a deliberate attempt has been made to reduce financial services activity in the eurozone.

Financial services should be the top priority for the Prime Minister. He has been clear about drawing a marker in the sand to the effect that Britain wants a secure legal agreement that, in the event that financial services legislation is against Britain’s best interest, we can prevent it from being imposed on us.

Private Finance Initiative

Debate between George Eustice and Andrea Leadsom

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

I think that my hon. Friends are reading my speech, because that was to be my next point. They have obviously been given advance notice. That is exactly the point: the builder, in theory, takes the risk on a project such as building a school, and the LEA only ever starts to repay the debt when the school is built and everything is in place. Theoretically, the builder takes the project risk. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) says, in reality there is bundling, and because there are sometimes unique risks to a project, often those revert to the LEA. The perceived advantages from the fact that the builder takes the project risk are therefore not always as clear cut as they might appear. In the end the major advantage has been that of not consolidating the debt on the national balance sheet.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

On that point, is my hon. Friend aware that, as well as being poor value for money for the taxpayer, PFI contracts have caused problems with the restructuring of certain elements of the public sector? For instance, several schools that have become academies have had all sorts of problems with their PFI contracts, causing tensions between them and the local authority. Sometimes those problems have been a block to a school’s moving to academy status.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Again, my hon. Friend takes me to my next point: the other side of the equation is the very apparent disadvantages of PFI, the primary and key one being the lack of flexibility. The reason for it is that often a special purpose vehicle sets up the project, and therefore the project is inexorably linked to its financing. For example, you may build a school and decide you want an extra classroom or two. A PFI school in the constituency of a member of the Treasury Committee built its hockey pitch 2 feet too short for internationals, so it tried to extend it by 2 feet, but therein lay a can of worms. It was impossible to do it other than at exorbitant cost, because the contract and its financing are inextricably tied together within the special purpose company. What happens, and the reason hon. Members have spoken of money being made out of the contract as it proceeds, is precisely that if you want to change the spec—which of course you do—