Jeremy Quin
Main Page: Jeremy Quin (Conservative - Horsham)Department Debates - View all Jeremy Quin's debates with the HM Treasury
(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
The British Business Bank—which was created under a policy announced by me at this Dispatch Box—is working successfully, and I pay tribute to Liberal Democrat colleagues in the coalition Government for helping us to deliver it. Of course it has an important role to play in the future. The right hon. Gentleman is right, in the broader sense, to say that we need to look at what we can do to support demand and credit in the economy. The Bank of England has many tools, and the Governor of the Bank has already indicated that, in his personal opinion, we should be looking at monetary easing.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
I congratulate the Chancellor on his fiscal response, and also on his comment on Heathrow in the statement. Will he reassure the House about the strength and stability of the UK banking system, given the reforms of the last six years?
Mr Osborne
I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. I should point out that I did not identify where the additional runway should be in the south-east of England, although I cannot but note that his constituency is next to Gatwick, so that may have been a loaded question.
As for my hon. Friend’s broader point, he is right to point to the stability of the banking system. Although we remain vigilant, we are not, today, talking about a banking crisis, despite a very significant adjustment in financial markets. That is because of difficult decisions made by this Government and their coalition predecessor to strengthen the capital requirements, so that banks have 10 times as much capital as they had seven or eight years ago, and to strengthen the oversight of our banking system by putting the Bank of England in charge. I think that those decisions have been justified by what has happened in the last 10 days, but that does not mean that we can ease up; of course we remain vigilant.