Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Osborne and Anas Sarwar

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

Evidence shows that it is not just having a job, but having the right job and the right level of pay that lifts someone out of poverty. So can the Chancellor tell us how many of those new jobs that have been created are full-time jobs, how many do not involve zero-hours contracts and how many actually pay the living wage?

[Mr Osborne]

We have 1.4 million new jobs in this economy. To take on the point about part-time work, there has also been an increase in the number of hours worked in the economy, and a lot of the recent increase in employment has come from full-time employment. Let us compare that with the disastrous situation we inherited from the Labour party, where unemployment was rocketing and youth unemployment was rocketing. Unemployment is now lower than it was at the general election, and many thousands—[Interruption.] That is the fact. Many thousands of young people have come off the claimant count for youth unemployment, too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Osborne and Anas Sarwar

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Small business rate relief has helped many small firms to cope with the cost of rates, and we have been able to extend it year after year. We will have to make a decision later in this Parliament about a further extension, but there is clear evidence that the current extension is doing a great deal of good.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The main complaint from businesses throughout the country, both small and large, is that they do not feel they are receiving the support that they need from the banking sector. Given that state-owned banks are among the poorest in terms of lending, what is Jeffrey—sorry, the Chancellor of the Exchequer—doing about it?

[Mr Osborne]

As I said earlier, the Royal Bank of Scotland is the largest lender to small businesses in our country. That is why it is such an important support for the economy. We are taking a serious look at how we can enable it to move on from all the bad loans—all the bad bets that it laid—during the middle years of the last decade, when, by the way, the shadow Chancellor, who is still muttering from a sedentary position, was City Minister.

Surely it is in all our interests to try to sort out the banking problem, but I have no idea whether Labour Members support our proposal on the Royal Bank of Scotland. We have heard absolutely nothing from them. However, what we are doing shows that we are actually confronting the problems that we inherited.

Economic Growth

Debate between George Osborne and Anas Sarwar

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

In every single year under this Government the rich will pay more in tax than in any single year of the Labour Government that the hon. Gentleman consistently supported, and the top rate of tax will be higher than in any single year of the Labour Government he supported. We put up capital gains tax so we avoided the scandal that they presided over—indeed, that the shadow Chancellor presided over—of cleaners paying higher rates of tax than the hedge fund managers they work for. That is what we have done to ensure fairness in our tax system, and that is what we are going to continue to do.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The Chancellor said those who work hard will be rewarded. Can he explain why wages are falling, household budgets are falling and the cost of living is going up? How is that fair?

[Mr Osborne]

Let us look at what the Governor of the Bank of England said in his press conference this morning:

“there is a welcome change in the economic outlook…But this is no time to be complacent—we must press on to ensure a recovery”.

Yes, there was also the disappointing news that unemployment had gone up, but we also saw that the claimant count and youth unemployment had come down, and the monthly unemployment data were a lot more encouraging than the three-month survey. That is the reality of the current data.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Osborne and Anas Sarwar

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I agreed with my hon. Friend until his last sentence. He is right to say that it is not just the big projects announced from this Dispatch Box that count; the local projects in Peterborough and elsewhere will also unlock jobs, development and investment. Of course, we cannot make all those announcements here in the House of Commons. However, we have provided local authorities with the funds to make those transport changes and improvements. We call it the Growing Places fund, and it is worth about £500 million. In the city deals that we are striking with different cities, we are improving road and rail connections to create jobs and get the private sector growing, which is what we all want to see.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The huge contraction in our construction sector is one of the reasons we are in a double-dip recession. We have seen two reshuffles—one in the UK Government and one in the Scottish Government. In Scotland, the new Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure, Investment and Cities will be building not the case for schools, hospitals and railways but the case for independence, and we have a UK Chancellor who thinks that a credible economic policy is just about rolling up his sleeves. When we will see a change in direction from this Government to make sure that we are creating investment and jobs right across the UK?

[Mr Osborne]

In this case, I agreed with the first half of the question. I do not think that the Scottish Government are focused on the priorities of the Scottish people, and I made that case when I spoke to CBI Scotland in Glasgow last week. However, I disagree with his attempt to compare the record of the Labour Government with that of this coalition Government. We are spending more on capital investment than the previous Labour Government planned to spend in this period, as they set out just before the general election. We are spending more on capital investment in the essential infrastructure of this country than they did. We are also taking tough decisions on welfare and the like in order to get the deficit down and get money spent where it can create jobs.

Banking

Debate between George Osborne and Anas Sarwar

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

When I next talk to the banking chiefs, I will certainly communicate to them, or my office will do so, the specific issues that my hon. Friend raises about the two banks in his constituency. One of the challenges we have at the moment is that RBS and Lloyds are trying to de-lever because of the enormous mess they got into under the previous Government. More generally, he makes a very good point about the importance of community banking. The four banks that have reached this settlement today are committed to extending that and thereby, to a degree, rolling back what happened in recent years. There are also those who want to enter the banking sector. Of course, they have to comply with the FSA requirements, but I know that some of them are offering a return to the kind of community banking that he talked about.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The Chancellor compares the funding given to the Labour party by trade unionists with the 50% of donations to his party from the City, but I remind him that it was the bankers who caused this crisis, not millions of hard-working trade unionists.

An FSA report found that RBS had 1.1 million customer complaints, more than 50% of which were not dealt with appropriately, resulting in a £2.8 million fine. Does the Chancellor think it is right to reward failure with lavish bonuses, whether in cash or in shares?

[Mr Osborne]

It was the last Labour Government who were responsible for the economic mess that we got ourselves into, and the sooner Labour Members face up to that, the better. One example of that was the arrangements put in place regarding RBS, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. That is the contract that we inherited from Labour; this is what the then Ministers who now sit on the shadow Front Bench signed up to: they explicitly told RBS that from 2010 it should pay in line with the market rate. We have now got it to be at the back of the market, not the front.