Independent Banking Commission Report

Ian Murray Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Yes, in short: I agree with my hon. Friend. John Vickers and his commissioners explicitly address the costs and benefits of these changes, and although they accept that there will be some additional costs, they will be more than outweighed by the broader benefits that include the benefits of having an environment in which banks are seen as more stable and the benefit to the UK economy of retail banks using their retail deposits to support retail lending.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

Some 100,000 jobs in Edinburgh are reliant on the financial services sector, including many tens of thousands in my constituency. How can the Chancellor reassure the House and my constituents that the banks will not pay the cost of implementing the Vickers report recommendations by cutting my constituents’ jobs?

[Mr Osborne]

Of course, one of the groups of people who are the innocent victims of what went wrong are the many people who worked in the branches of banks such as RBS and HBOS throughout the country and who lost their jobs even though they were not investment bankers working in the City of London or trading mortgage derivatives and so forth. I hope that we can now build a successful and competitive banking system that, in Scotland and elsewhere, hires people, opens branches and reverses the trend of recent years. Such groups of people have definitely been the innocent victims of what went wrong and we must do right by them.