Spending Review

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Following the example of the Hilling handbook, I call Mr Andrew Selous.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Will the Chancellor confirm that there will be a cap on benefits and not on the state pension in future?

[Mr Osborne]

Yes, absolutely. We received representations to include the state pension. We are not going to do so, but of course that will ultimately be decided at a general election.

Economic Growth

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

This is what I have to say about the idea that this Government had some kind of golden economic inheritance from the Labour party: we inherited a situation in which Britain had had the deepest recession since the 1930s, the worst banking crisis in the entirety of British history and the highest budget deficit in the entire peacetime history of this nation. If that is a golden economic inheritance, I would hate to see what the hon. Gentleman thinks a hospital pass looks like.

The shadow Chancellor mentioned France in his remarks. Exactly a year ago the Labour leader could not contain his excitement about the economic programme being unveiled in France and about the red carpet being rolled out for him at the Elysée palace. “Chers camarades” is how he addressed the Socialist party gathering. He said, “What President Hollande is seeking to do in France, I want to do in Britain.” We do not hear much these days about Labour’s French connection. We still have liberté and egalité, but not much fraternité—although fraternity has never been a great topic for the Miliband family.

What we did not hear from the shadow Chancellor was his response to the fact that 1.2 million jobs have been created in the private sector, and that although, yes, our deficit is still too high, it has fallen by a third. He says we are borrowing more. We were borrowing £158 billion a year as a country in 2009-10, and this year it is forecast that we will be borrowing £114 billion. That is a £45 billion reduction in borrowing. None of that has been easy to achieve, and every single measure has been opposed by Labour. Not a single measure in its amendment today would help deal with that deficit, but our plan of monetary activism, fiscal responsibility and supply-side reform is delivering progress.

[Andrew Selous]

On employment, is the Chancellor aware that the United Kingdom’s overall employment rate is growing at almost double that of the United States and is rising faster than that of any other G7 country?

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Last year, employment in the UK grew faster than in the US, France, Germany, Japan and the eurozone as a whole. Employment in the UK is now above its pre-recession level. Of course we must go on taking the difficult measures necessary to get our deficit under control, and make sure we support businesses that want to hire people to support the private sector recovery. The path being offered by the Opposition, however, would lead to complete disaster.

Economic Policy

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

That is the first sensible question we have heard from the Labour party all afternoon. I agree with the hon. Lady that we have to make sure that the decisions we take on reducing the size of Government are implemented. Collectively as a Parliament we have to reduce Government spending and we have to get the deficit down. I look forward to her support in the Division Lobby as we take further difficult decisions this year.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

We learned this morning that the UK oil and gas industry is set to invest an extra £100 billion in the industry, with anticipated tax revenues of a further £25 billion to the UK Exchequer. Does that not give us some cause for confidence in and optimism for the public finances as we move forward?

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right that it is very welcome news from the oil and gas industry, and it is partly because we have been able to provide certainty on decommissioning relief, which it has long sought. One of the challenges for the UK economy is the secular decline in the North sea oil field as it reaches its maturity. Although we will get oil out of it for many more years, we have to look to the post-North sea future, and that is one of the big challenges for the SNP.

Autumn Statement

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My right hon. Friend the Business Secretary will set out more detail about the business bank. What I have confirmed today is the £1 billion of additional capital. Our ambition is that this will help to lever in private sector capital as well. Through the business finance partnership, which is not included in this £1 billion, we have already undertaken work to get more non-bank financing to medium-sized companies in particular. We are looking at similar models for the business bank, and my right hon. Friend will make an announcement on that. We are also going to use the opportunity to bring together all the myriad schemes announced by various Governments on business finance, finance for SMEs and the like, which are sometimes confusing, so that the business community has just one place to go to. As I have said, I have announced £1 billion extra for the business bank.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I thank the Chancellor profusely for ending the appalling delay in the building of the A5-M1 link, the construction of which was first announced by the previous Government in 2003. That road will contribute massively to the south Bedfordshire economy, enabling us to contribute to the regeneration of UK plc.

[Mr Osborne]

I thank my hon. Friend for campaigning assiduously for that project. He has made a strong case for how the new link road will open up the prospect of real economic development as well as dealing with traffic congestion. That is exactly the kind of programme that we can undertake—it did not happen under the last Labour Government—because we have made the switch from current spending to capital spending. Again, I congratulate him on the campaign that he has fought, which I think has involved quite a few Adjournment debates in the House.

LIBOR (FSA Investigation)

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

First, I hope the hon. Gentleman does not mind me saying on behalf of the whole House that we very much welcome him to his place. He has the deepest sympathy of the whole House for the tragedy in his family. It is good to see him back here.

There is no estimate of the cost to individuals or consumers, and it would be very difficult to construct one. We are talking about the daily rate set, in the case of these abuses, over a three or four-year period, and it was used to set mortgage rates, loan rates and all sorts of other things. Sometimes the rate was manipulated to be too low and sometimes it was manipulated to be too high compared with the true market price. We do not have an estimate, but it is clear that, as the FSA says, the manipulation contributed to the risk to the entire financial system, which then, in effect, collapsed, not because of that, but as part of the culture we have been talking about, and the country has paid many billions for that.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I agree with what the Chancellor said about the failure of the previous regulatory regime, but as far as the senior management of the banks are concerned, does he agree that ignorance is absolutely no defence? They should have known what was going on.

[Mr Osborne]

I completely agree. One of the things that has shocked the entire country in the aftermath of the financial crisis is how little people appeared to know about what was going on in their banks. That is why it is very important that Mr Diamond accounts for himself and his management and explains what they knew and when they knew it.

Jobs and Growth

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The Labour party certainly does have a different whipping operation: it sends all its information to the other political parties.

Let us get back to discussing the economy. The central argument that the shadow Chancellor was trying to make, and the argument he makes in the amendment, is that the British economy is not as strong as the German economy—that is what we are all being asked to vote on tonight. He is absolutely right about that. The British economy is not as strong as the German economy, and I will tell hon. Members why. It is because for the past decade, in the good years, Germany fixed the roof when the sun was shining and he did not when he was in government.

I will tell hon. Members what happened when the right hon. Gentleman was in government. Over the decade before the crash, Germany maintained its share of world exports while Britain’s share almost halved; Germany was selling more than £10 billion of goods a year to China while Britain was exporting one fifth of that—indeed we were exporting more to Ireland than to Brazil, India, China and Russia put together; and Germany’s manufacturing sector grew by 34%, whereas our manufacturing sector not only did not grow but halved as a share of our total output, while our over-leveraged banking sector grew by 100%. Germany, after years of sustainable economic growth, entered the financial crisis with a budget surplus. Britain, in the years that he was in charge, led a debt-fuelled consumption that drove an expansion in deficit and in debt. Under Labour we entered the financial crisis with the largest budget deficit in the G7 and left it with the largest in the G20.

Instead of making us more like Germany, the right hon. Gentleman made us more like Greece when he was in the Treasury. Britain’s economy became over-borrowed, unbalanced and unsustainable. The person more responsible for that than anyone else active in politics today, the person who encouraged the borrowing, dismantled the banking regulation and gambled the futures of 60 million people on the City of London, is sitting right over there—the shadow Chancellor. It is the people on this side of the House who are clearing up the mess he left behind.

[Andrew Selous]

Does the Chancellor agree that one of the infrastructure failures left by the previous Government was the lack of direct flights from this country to the big, growing cities of China—there are many more flights from German cities to China—and that the Government will put that right in due course?

[Mr Osborne]

I certainly think that a lack of airport capacity is a challenge for this country, but one of the good things that may emerge from the bmi merger is that more slots may become available at Heathrow to open up routes to those cities in China. My hon. Friend makes the very good observation that we have to do much more to expand our exports and our links with the Chinas and Indias of this world. One of the good things that has happened in the past few years is that our exports to China and India are up by a third, and we need to see more of that.

In his speech, the shadow Chancellor dismissed the Governor of the Bank of England as plain wrong. Who appointed the Governor? Did the recommendation ever come across the desk of the shadow Chancellor when he was the political adviser in the Treasury? [Interruption.] We will find out. Yesterday the Governor said:

“We have been through…the biggest downturn in world output since the 1930s, the biggest banking crisis in this country’s history, the biggest fiscal deficit in our peacetime history, and our biggest trading partner, the euro area, is tearing itself apart”.

My message to the House today is that addressing those problems is not easy, but nor is it impossible. I will come on to talk about the eurozone, but first we must put our own house in order, and we are making progress on doing so.

Eurozone Crisis

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Can the Chancellor tell us how on earth it can be the case that, although it has a larger deficit than Greece, the United Kingdom enjoys German levels of interest rates?

[Mr Osborne]

That is because this Government, in the teeth of opposition from the Labour party—which created this mess—have established fiscal credibility, brought our interest rates down, and ensured that while we may talk about the bail-out of some European countries, we are not talking about the bail-out of Britain.

Jobs and Growth

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I will make a bit of progress before I give way.

Not only are we taking measures to make it easier to employ people and putting in place measures to get people back into work—[Interruption.] They are not going to hit women; they are going to help women get into work. We have also announced new investment in local transport links. We are spending more on roads and railways than the last Labour Government did. We have plans for 200,000 new homes, many of them on the back of a new right to buy. We have created two dozen new enterprise zones, and this month committed almost £250 million to world-beating scientific research. That is because, unlike the last Government, we think it is important that things are made in Britain again.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

The Chancellor has just told us that there have been £31 billion of extra Labour spending pledges—£11 billion from an amendment last week and £20 billion today. Given that we already pay £120 million every day in debt interest, can he tell us how much extra debt interest we would be paying every day if those Labour proposals went through?

[Mr Osborne]

I have not got that calculation on me, but I will certainly give it to my hon. Friend and use it at a future opportunity, because it is a reminder that this money is coming directly out of the Government coffers in debt interest payments every single day.

Eurozone

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The vote in the Bundestag was very encouraging. Of course, it is easier for us in the House of Commons to say that the Germans must act and that we must create this fund, but we must understand that German taxpayers are being asked an awful lot—although I would say that that was one of the consequences of a single currency. Nevertheless, it is reassuring that the vote in the Bundestag was passed not merely with a straightforward majority but with the so-called Chancellor’s majority.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I very much welcome the action my right hon. Friend has announced about quantitative easing and credit easing. Will he say whether he thinks it would be helpful for the UK economy if our European partners were to adopt the same policy, given that 40% of our exports go to Europe?

[Mr Osborne]

I think I had better leave their monetary policy to the European Central Bank and not offer them such advice.

The Economy

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I have taken several interventions, and I will take some more after I have made a little progress.

The Government have put in place three measures: first, a credible plan to deal with the deficit; secondly, a plan for growth that supports the private sector and rebalances our economy; and thirdly—astonishingly, the shadow Chancellor did not mention this—a plan for the banking sector, to ensure that we deal with the problems we currently face while also preventing a repeat of the banking crisis in future.

Let me address each of those in turn. In terms of the budget deficit, our understanding is based on the following points. Britain has a large structural deficit; it emerged before the recession began; it will not go away automatically as the economy recovers; and it puts our whole economy at risk. We only have to look at what is happening in other parts of Europe to see that that is the case. Almost all the independent observers of the British economy agree with those points, including the crucial fact that we had a structural deficit before the crisis struck. The OECD and the International Monetary Fund estimate that before the crisis Britain had the largest structural deficit of all the G7 countries.

Tony Blair states in his memoirs that

“from 2005 onwards Labour was insufficiently vigorous in limiting or eliminating the potential structural deficit.”

[Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor says, “Rubbish.” I thought that he conducted his politics on the record, and I am not sure that Tony Blair would have agreed with that; the last time he checked, he was the Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury in 2005.

My predecessor as Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West, says that by 2007

“we had reached the limits of what I thought we should be spending.”

What is the shadow Chancellor’s view? It is this:

“I don’t think we had a structural deficit at all”.

No one agrees with him on that; he is in complete denial.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

At that point in 2007, what did the then Government do? They increased spending by £90 billion, far above the level of inflation, and going against the advice we now know they got from the Treasury. Was that not seriously negligent?

[Mr Osborne]

The entire economic record of the previous Government was negligent, which is why no one is going to trust Labour with the economy again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

The core purposes of the Treasury are to ensure the stability of the economy, promote growth and employment, reform banking, manage the public finances and generally clear up the mess left by the Labour party.

[Andrew Selous]

Will the Chancellor update the House on the progress made in making us one nation in pensions, so that people in the private sector do not have to pay for public sector pensions that they can only dream of receiving themselves?

[Mr Osborne]

We are seeking a more equitable balance. Lord Hutton is due to produce his final report just before the Budget, and we await that. However, we have already made it clear that we need to see savings for the taxpayer. Those were set out in the spending review, and, as I said, we are committed to them. However, in conversations with trade unions, I have been prepared to enter into discussions with them on an extended time frame—to June—about exactly how those savings can be found across schemes and different pay scales.

Bank Bonuses

Debate between George Osborne and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Does the Chancellor agree that, in addition to getting the banks to lend more to business, we should be focusing on getting the maximum sustainable tax take from banks? That involves concentrating on the tax take, not just tax rates—a mistake that the Opposition often make.

[Mr Osborne]

Absolutely. What we want is the maximum sustainable tax revenue—that is the objective of this Government—and, indeed, to get the maximum sustainable lending into the British economy. We are trying to link the two in a settlement. I have no idea what the Labour party is proposing, but this is the sensible way forward.