Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Darling]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point. He is right that the right hon. Gentleman called for nationalisation at an early stage. The current Chancellor, however, was dead against that. I imagine that if that situation arose now, the Chancellor’s view would prevail and the Business Secretary would have to do what he is told. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that at the time I agreed with a lot of what the Business Secretary was saying. For reasons that I will not go into just now because of the various legal requirements and other considerations, we did not nationalise Northern Rock until February 2008, but we were absolutely right to do so then. The Chancellor still thinks that we were wrong, but I am glad to say that the current Secretary of State for Justice believes that our action was right. The action we took, whether in relation to Northern Rock, the rest of the banking system or the rest of the economy, was critical.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

While we are reflecting on recent history—the Chancellor yesterday spoke of the levels of debt prior to the economic crisis and blamed a long history of alleged Labour overspending —will my right hon. Friend speculate on why the Conservatives supported the Labour Government’s spending plans right up to the end of 2008?

[Mr Darling]

The Conservatives did so because they thought it expedient, but at the end of 2008, they decided to change tack. In all we heard yesterday, the Chancellor did not explain why, if everything was going wrong and we were spending too much in the previous few years, he was quite happy to support such spending right up until the end of 2008.