LIBOR (FSA Investigation)

Debate between George Osborne and Stuart Bell

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

May I build on the question put by my right hon. Friend the former Chancellor of the Exchequer about the independence of LIBOR? The Chancellor has not referred to the British Bankers Association, which was involved in 1984 in putting the rate together. Is it appropriate to talk again to the association to see if we can get a true, independent LIBOR?

[Mr Osborne]

The BBA is concerned about what has happened and has already instituted a review into the operation of LIBOR. I should like to hear its thoughts on that, but we need to look at the regulation of the rate and its independence. LIBOR is a very important rate that is used to set mortgage and loan rates for pretty much everyone in the country, so we want to make sure that what happened never happens again.

Banking Commission Report

Debate between George Osborne and Stuart Bell

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Building on my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor’s statement on bank lending to the small and medium-sized enterprise sector, has the Chancellor made any study at all of the impact of what he calls bigger cushions—raising capital requirements from 7% to 9%—on bank lending to that sector? Can he offer the House a guarantee that he will consider that as part of his consultation leading to his White Paper in the spring?

[Mr Osborne]

It is precisely to avoid a procyclical impact that the backstop for capital requirements is 2019, so there is quite a long timetable, which is consistent with the Basel agreement, but the hon. Gentleman is of course right to point out—indeed, the shadow Chancellor made this point—that the current situation in the eurozone is causing a stress on bank funding around the world. It was good to hear the shadow Chancellor acknowledge at the end of his remarks that the biggest single threat to British businesses, as I think he put it, is the current eurozone crisis, which is an analysis we share.

Autumn Statement

Debate between George Osborne and Stuart Bell

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Despite the deterioration in the borrowing forecast, the debt interest payments that we are making are £24 billion less than forecast. That is the burden of the debt, and it would be billions more if the shadow Chancellor ever got his hands on the British economy again.

[Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

I welcome the Chancellor’s statement on the 100% capital allowances for the enterprise zones in the Tees valley. I refer him to his statement that he will target £20 billion from pension funds for infrastructure investment. May I draw his attention to the fact that the industry has something like £80 billion in its kitty? I invite him to go back and raise more money for more investment in the same project.

[Mr Osborne]

I would certainly like to see even more money coming from British pension funds, but £20 billion is an ambitious target. It is a shame that we have not been able to mobilise private sector resources from the pension funds in the past decade in the way that we should. The Government are making a determined effort to change that, and I hope that the memorandum of understanding that we signed with two groups of pension funds will lead to more infrastructure investment in the Tees valley and elsewhere.

Eurozone

Debate between George Osborne and Stuart Bell

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I am very clear that the resources we provide to the European Union should be well spent. Indeed, there is a whole separate agenda that we have not touched on today of getting the European Union better focused on trying to encourage growth and competitiveness across the entire continent. Like, I suspect, my hon. Friend, I also share the frustration about the application of European law that means that we have to end up paying benefits to people who are not in this country. That is one of the frustrations that Governments in the past have had to deal with, and we are looking at whether there are potential avenues around it.

[Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

It was no doubt an oversight that the Chancellor did not mention the conference at the weekend between President Sarkozy and Angela Merkel where they called for a rapid and global response that had to be in place by the time of the G20 meeting in November. The Prime Minister responded by saying that he did not want to put a single euro into saving the euro after 2013. He said that he did not want the involvement of the investment bank and that all he wanted was participation through the IMF—which, incidentally, I did not vote against earlier in the year. Is this what we call being at the heart of Europe and punching above our weight, or are we moving towards a two-speed Europe?

Independent Banking Commission Report

Debate between George Osborne and Stuart Bell

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

That is because they leave the House of Commons and go to work for investment banks.

My hon. Friend's experience was that an investment bank had many incentives to use retail deposits to subsidise its activity. That was not always right, and Glass–Steagall helped to stop it. We are not reintroducing Glass–Steagall, or introducing it in the United Kingdom; we have a different set of proposals which John Vickers has spent time developing, and I think that they meet the challenge that my hon. Friend set out in his article.

[Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

The House will certainly have welcomed the statement that retail banks are likely in the future to funnel their deposits into domestic lending rather than the vast maw of the money markets. The Chancellor has said that there ought to be 10% capital for the retail banks. Presumably that is high-quality equity, and it is reported that a further 10% of non-equity may be required. May I ask the Chancellor to ensure that the capital requirements are no greater than those of Basel III? Too tall a requirement might cut across growth, and cut across lending to the small and medium-sized business sector.

[Mr]

Osborne: The 10% capital requirement against risk-weighted assets is based on the same definition as, and goes a bit beyond, the Basel rules, which recommend 7%. At present, however, the Financial Stability Board is developing proposals to add 2.5% for large, systemically important banks such as RBS and Barclays. The difference will be between 9.5% and 10%, which is quite close, for the retail ring-fenced side. On the investment side, as I have said, the commission does not recommend going beyond the international rules in order to keep London competitive.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Osborne and Stuart Bell

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to comment directly on the value of the euro, but I would observe that we have a weak US dollar and that that may have had an impact on the value of the euro. As I said just now, it is important for us to focus on the task in hand, which is implementing the agreement most recently signed on 21 July by the eurozone. Of course we can and should have a discussion about the future of the euro and its governance arrangements—and that is important—but the euro is here to stay and we have to ensure that it works for Europe. I do not want Britain to be part of the euro, and there is no prospect of that happening—[Interruption.] Labour Members seem to forget that they are still committed in principle to joining the euro. This Government will not join the euro, but it is in our interests that the euro works.

[Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Is the Chancellor aware that, with the exception of Portugal, growth among member states of the eurozone is higher than ours? If fiscal union is to take place, and there is to be a common euro bond, in which order does he think they should come?

[Mr Osborne]

As I have been saying in recent weeks, we need to follow the remorseless logic of monetary union. That was one of the reasons I was against Britain joining the euro—I thought it would lead to greater fiscal integration and common budget policies. There is obviously an active debate about what that might mean, and I would suggest that the first thing that the eurozone countries need to do is to implement the package agreed on 21 July.

May I correct the hon. Gentleman? It is not the case—sadly—that Britain has the slowest growth in Europe. Actually, the problem is that German growth in the last quarter was 0.1% and French growth for Q2 was zero. That is the challenge—a eurozone where growth is faltering, and the situation in the United States. We have to deal with these international problems as well as addressing the very serious problems that we inherited.

Global Economy

Debate between George Osborne and Stuart Bell

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I expected that that question might arise, as it often does at Treasury events. As people will have seen, the price of gold has hit a record high of $1,800. It was $300 when the shadow Chancellor sold our gold stocks. As a result of that action, this country has lost £12 billion.

[Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

The House will have noted that the Chancellor did not mention the fact that inflation is approaching 5%, the fact that that our borrowing is £46 billion higher than his figure, or the fact that consumer and business confidence is falling. He did mention his growth plan, but there is no growth. When will he accept the paradox that the sharper and deeper the cuts, the less growth there will be?

[Mr Osborne]

The question that I would ask the hon. Gentleman is this: who in the world does he expect to be lending money to countries with very high budget deficits if they do not have credible deficit reduction plans? What group of people would put their money on the line? That is precisely the problem that we have at the moment in the global financial markets.

The hon. Gentleman asked about inflation. Yesterday, at his press conference, the Governor of the Bank of England said that he expected it to hit 5% this year. Let me draw attention to another silver lining to the dark clouds. Commodity prices have fallen in the last few weeks, and the oil price has fallen somewhat from its high. One of the biggest challenges that all developed and, indeed, developing countries have faced in the last year or so has been the very big increase in the oil price.

Comprehensive Spending Review

Debate between George Osborne and Stuart Bell

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he has considerable experience in this area. The problem with the graduate tax, which we honestly looked at and honestly considered—[Interruption.] Actually, an enormous amount of work was done in looking at the feasibility of the graduate tax, some of it by the previous Government: the shadow Chancellor was the higher education Minister who ruled out a graduate tax, and under the previous Government the education Department published a paper about why it would not work. As I have said, we looked at this idea carefully—we approached it in a genuinely open-minded way—but there were many disadvantages to it. One of them was that it would represent a massive centralisation of the university system with, basically, the Treasury controlling, almost to the last pound, how much different universities would get. That is why, as I understand it, the Russell group of universities—for a start—are completely against it.

[Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

On the Prime Minister’s statement which the Chancellor confirmed, the House will welcome the facts that the science budget is safeguarded, that the adult apprenticeship scheme will be advanced, and that £500 million will go into the Tyne and Wear metro and the Tees valley bus network.

Following on from the questions of my hon. Friends the Members for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) and for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), since the Chancellor places so much emphasis on fairness, how can it be fair to make 490,000 people unemployed in the public sector and a putative further 500,000 in the private sector? How can that be a sensible policy for growth?

[Mr Osborne]

That is, quite frankly, a deliberate misrepresentation of the number, which was produced independently. The number is for the reduction in the public sector head-count over four years. As I have said, there will be redundancies, but there will also be posts that go unfilled. The plan set forward by the Labour party also involved a reduction in the head-count of hundreds of thousands; the Leader of the Opposition admitted that on a number of occasions during both the general election and his party’s leadership contest. We have all got to face up to this challenge, but I should point out that the same organisation that produced the number that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) cites—the Office for Budget Responsibility—also forecasts falling unemployment through to 2014.