Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Helen Goodman and Vince Cable

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

There are two elements to the Chancellor’s housing package. The first is the development of the FirstBuy scheme, which will provide £3.5 billion for shared ownership. That has been widely welcomed because it will increase the demand for housing and get the housing market going. The other, more ambitious scheme is a form of insurance for mortgages, which has been very successfully applied in Canada, for example, where it prevented a collapse of the market of the kind that occurred here and introduced greater stability. The Chancellor is now consulting on how that scheme should be designed, which is absolutely right.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State needs to be a champion of the mansion tax, which would be a very sensible thing to do at the moment. Why is he supporting this scheme, which will support the purchase of houses up to the value of £600,000?

[Vince Cable]

I remain a champion of the mansion tax and will continue to champion it with my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches. The Chancellor is going to consult on how this major reform to the housing market will be implemented. We recognise that there are many complex products in the mortgage market. For example, many parents support their children’s housing acquisitions. Those kinds of transactions have to be properly analysed before the scheme is launched.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

I recommend that the hon. Gentleman look at the OBR’s figures to see what has happened to Government consumption in the past three years. In 2010, it grew by 0.5%; in 2011, it grew by 2.6%; and last year, it grew by 0.6%. It is true that aspects of Government spending have been cut in a way that has been damaging. The Chancellor has acknowledged, as I have, that capital spending cuts were a mistake. That was the one bit of fiscal consolidation that the Labour Government launched, and it has had damaging consequences, which is why we are now reversing it.

[Helen Goodman]

That is not how things look from the perspective of the north-east. The Government destroyed regional development agencies. Of the capital spending the Government have introduced, only 0.5% has gone to the north-east. Why?

[Vince Cable]

Job creation in the north-east is growing more rapidly than it is in many other parts of the country. It is precisely because the north-east has a higher share of exports in its regional gross domestic product than any other region that it is benefiting from the shift that is now taking place to manufacturing.

Executive Pay

Debate between Helen Goodman and Vince Cable

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

They will certainly narrow it, in contrast with the trend over the past decade that was identified in a recent OECD survey. It showed that almost uniquely in the developed world, the big disparities between the top and bottom are widening in Britain. Today’s announcement is one key element in rectifying that adverse trend, which we have seen particularly in the past decade.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said that the decisions about RBS top pay were above his pay grade, but unlike the workers, he is on the board of the Government, namely the Cabinet. Will Ministers set a good example and control Stephen Hester’s bonus?

[Vince Cable]

Ministers have already made it very clear that bonus restraint should be employed in that company.

Local Growth White Paper

Debate between Helen Goodman and Vince Cable

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

As I think I told one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues earlier, there was a problem with the black country submission, which did not have a sufficiently substantial business input. We hope that those problems will be resolved within weeks rather than months, and it is important that they are, because the deadline for the first bidding round in the regional growth fund is in January, so the relevant bodies will need to progress quickly if they are to participate.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has railed against centralisation this lunchtime, but the truth is that we in the north-east had a consensus on the value of our RDA. Only this morning, James Ramsbotham, the head of the North East chamber of commerce, complained about the pulling back of inward investment to Victoria street. When will the Secretary of State think again?

[Vince Cable]

I thought that there was a consensus in the north-east, but it manifested itself in a whole series of fragmented bids, and that is rather sad. Fortunately, the situation has been retrieved. Council leaders are now working and talking together, and they have produced a much better proposal, which I think will succeed. On foreign investment, it is absolutely absurd for regional development agencies throughout the country to have separate, competing ambassadors in overseas countries. Such work really has to be done much more sensibly, and the LEPs will have a role in helping foreign investors once they have committed themselves to a particular location.

Higher Education and Student Finance

Debate between Helen Goodman and Vince Cable

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question but, again, I have answered that in different ways. We accept that one of the fundamental problems at the moment is the imbalance in the graduate population. There is a severe shortage of engineers in particular, but in STEM subjects in general. Unfortunately, there is a growing pool of graduate unemployment in other areas, so we must support the STEM subjects, and we will continue to do so through the teaching grant.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State mentioned the advent of real interest rates, but he does not seem to understand that their introduction means that a maths teacher on a middle-income salary will ramp up a bigger debt than, for example, an economist in a multinational company. Is he trying to tell us that in reality injustice is the new fairness?

[Vince Cable]

I know that the hon. Lady is highly economically literate, going back over her history, but I think that on this particular issue, she has not read the report or perhaps not followed it closely enough.

The proposal for real interest rates applies only above the £21,000 threshold. Some numbers were published on the front page of The Guardian this morning that probably gave rise to the conclusion that the hon. Lady has drawn. Those figures are wrong, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which was quoted, has disowned them. It is clear from the analysis that the structure is progressive, but not in the way that she described.