Global Economy

John Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We have announced an enterprise zone for Sheffield and we will have further announcements to make on enterprise zones in the coming weeks. The evidence of the past 10 years is that in important regions of our country—I have in mind the statistics for the west midlands, rather than for the hon. Lady’s constituency—private sector employment fell over the decade before the financial crash. That shows that that model of growth we pursued, based on the biggest housing boom of any country—with the possible exception of Ireland—the most over-leveraged banks and the highest budget deficit, ultimately led to ruin. We need a different model of growth in which we grow the private sector in areas such as Sheffield and get real, lasting jobs, rather than assuming that we can just use Government spending to create them.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

As someone who believes that we need to get the deficit down and do more to assist growth to help that, will the Chancellor look at the dreadful losses at RBS and the big hit on capital values on its shares, and see what more can be done to manage that colossal pool of assets in the interests of economic growth and the taxpayer?

[Mr Osborne]

We of course continue to monitor the situation at RBS and all the British banks very closely. There is a concern in the financial markets about the capitalisation and liquidity provisions of banks in many countries. I have to say that those concerns have not been expressed at the moment about the UK. We passed the stress tests well and we have a strong liquidity provision in place for the banks, including RBS, and the markets can therefore have confidence in British banks.