Spending Review and Autumn Statement

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour has been a big champion of investment in the north, not just in his constituency but in the north-west of England. My speech on the northern powerhouse, which I gave to an audience that included Labour metropolitan leaders, was last summer. Since then, working across party divisions, we have had agreement now in Liverpool, Greater Manchester, Sheffield, Tees Valley and in the north-east to have a big devolution of power from Whitehall to those areas and elected mayors. There is a huge commitment of transport capital. We have created Transport for the North, which did not exist a year ago, and funded it, and there is a big commitment to the cultural institutions in the north of England as well, so we are talking about a massive commitment. We have also made a big commitment to science institutions across the north, which is something close to his heart.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s decision to increase the counter-terrorism budget and to protect the policing budget, not just because of what happened in Paris but generally for the future of policing. Given that so much organised crime and terrorism are international, is there sufficient flexibility in what he said this afternoon for us to support organisations such as Europol and Interpol, which obviously help us in the work that we are doing?

[Mr Osborne]

Of course we support those international institutions that help us to fight crime. I want to thank the right hon. Gentleman for his support for what we have said today about our police and police funding. The Home Secretary will set out more details about how that real-terms protection will be provided. We do not just provide funding to forces but have a transformation fund, which can encourage the efficiencies that we all want to see in our police, not least the police officers themselves, and make sure that they have the capabilities they need to deal with threats such as marauding gun attacks. It is a real-terms protection, and also, as a minimum, it is a protection in cash terms for the National Crime Agency to ensure that it is funded to do its work as well.

Greece

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I will not exactly use the language that my hon. Friend uses, but I think he would absolutely agree that we need to respect the rights of the Greek people to make their own decisions on their future. They have clearly expressed their view in the referendum, but of course they are part of a currency where other populations care about the arrangements with Greece. Governments in Ireland, Spain and the like ask, “We have undertaken a lot of these reforms and measures, so why are the same things not demanded of the Greeks?” That is the challenge that the eurozone faces. Where my hon. Friend and I agree is that we are well out of it and are happy with our pound sterling.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Since 1 January, 66,000 people have illegally crossed the border between Greece and Turkey. That is 360 a day, many of whom travel through the island of Kos to get to the Greek mainland. Greece requires urgent help to police not only its border, but the border of the EU. If we do not help Greece on this particular issue, the migrants will fall into the hands of people traffickers and end up in Calais, where the issue will become a problem for Britain and France. What can we do to help the Greeks with this issue?

[Mr Osborne]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw our attention to the serious migrant issues in Greece. I think we all remember seeing the television images a few weeks ago of the boat crashing into the rocks off the beaches in Greece. I know that the Home Secretary and other European Interior Ministers have spoken to the Greek Government about the direct assistance we can provide to help them police their borders and deal with what is, of course, a common challenge.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

Libraries are funded and run by local authorities, and it does not surprise me that an excellent Conservative local authority is investing in its libraries.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

T7. I congratulate the Minister for creative industries on his outstanding work in encouraging international film makers, especially from Bollywood, to come and make their films in the United Kingdom. Does he agree that it is important that that helps with jobs, growth and the diversity of UK film making?

[Mr Vaizey]

I am very pleased to have that question from the right hon. Gentleman. Although we obviously welcome investment from the west coast of America, particularly yesterday’s announcement by Warner Bros. that it will be filming J. K. Rowling’s “Fantastic Beasts”, it is important to remember that Bollywood is bigger than Hollywood, and we need also to encourage Indian film makers to make films in this country with our excellent crew and casts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

There are many different areas, but let me just pick one. The latest statistics from the Federation of Small Businesses show a dramatic increase in the number of women starting up businesses in the retail sector, and high streets across the country are seeing the benefit. Half of all small businesses established in retail in the past two years are primarily owned by women. That is in stark contrast with 20 years ago, when it was less than a quarter. That demonstrates the fundamental role that women are playing in helping the country to recover from recession. I hope that Members on all sides of the House will encourage retail businesses on their high streets to apply for the Future High Streets Forum’s Great British high streets awards.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Nobody doubts the Minister’s commitment to equality, but why are there so few black and Asian women sitting on the boards of our companies?

[Nicky Morgan]

It is a very good question. There is no doubt that more progress is needed. Earlier this week I was at an event for the 30% Club, which has been campaigning for a voluntary business-led approach, started by Lord Davies, to get more women in particular on the boards of companies. Part of that is about working with executive search companies and asking the chairmen of companies to think differently about appointments. Often the traditional and expected route of a CV is not something that women or others, particularly from black and minority ethnic communities, can put forward. We need to broaden the way in which chairmen of boards, and the boards themselves, appoint new directors.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point, and I am pleased to tell him that recipients of the Victoria Cross who were born abroad will be commemorated not only in their country of birth, but here in Britain.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment. This is the first time in the history of this country that a majority of Ministers in a Department are from the ethnic minority communities—all with different hairstyles, but all appointed on merit. I strongly support what the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) said. Could we have a physical representation of that, and may I offer Leicester as a city in which a monument could be put up to those who served in the war?

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his warm words, despite his comments about my excellent hairstyle. He makes an important point about a monument—I cannot think why he picked Leicester—and that is certainly worth looking at.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

The figures from HMRC show that the cost of reducing the 50p rate to 45p was about £100 million. It is precisely because the tax was not raising any money that I was willing to support the decision to reduce it, on the basis that we would raise much more money from the same people in different ways. The House might like to be updated on one of those measures. The annual tax on enveloped dwellings—the mansion tax for tax dodgers—is raising five times as much as we thought it would.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

6. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Health on introducing an additional tax on drinks with a high sugar content.

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

There are difficulties of principle and practice with using tax instruments to promote public health. Unlike smoking, where any level of consumption can have damaging effects, the consumption of most drinks in moderation can be to the benefit, rather than the detriment, of an individual’s health. The Government are instead working with industry to reduce the nation’s calorie intake.

[Keith Vaz]

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has called for a 20% tax on sugary drinks, stating that it would provide enormous health benefits and yield £1 billion to the Treasury. We spend £9.8 billion a year on dealing with type 2 diabetes and its complications. Will the Exchequer Secretary consider that idea for inclusion in the next Budget? At the very least, will he meet a delegation of those who want to make the argument in favour of such a tax?

[Mr Gauke]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks. This is a problem of over-consumption and tax can often be a blunt instrument in dealing with such problems. My hon. Friend the Economic Secretary will be more than happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman and a delegation to discuss the matter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I thank my hon. Friend for his continuing work in promoting Islamic finance and diversity in financial markets. London is already a global player in Islamic finance, which brings in significant investment and creates thousands of jobs. Last week I also announced that we are bringing together a global Islamic investment group. This group will have the expertise to help Islamic finance grow globally, as well as developing London as one of the leading centres for Islamic finance.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

May I also welcome what the Government have done? It will make this country the first anywhere in the western world to provide sharia-compliant bonds. We do not just want people to invest from outside, however. Although the last census showed that Brecon and Radnor had 116 Muslim people, I have 21,075 in my constituency. How does the Minister intend to sell those bonds to the people of Leicester East?

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his warm words. Britain already has 20 banks offering Islamic financial products. We also have 49 sukuk listed on the London stock exchange, valued at over £25 billion, and 25 law firms that have significant Islamic practices. We will bring all this experience together to further develop Britain as an Islamic finance centre, and I am sure that will help his constituents with their investment decisions.

Corporate Structures and Financial Crime

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) and I associate myself with his remarks about my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is an assiduous campaigner on this and so many other issues.

My small contribution will be about the way in which proceeds of crime have found their way into the financial sector, and I will seek assurances from the Minister that the Government are doing everything they can to deal with the issue of proceeds of crime within our financial structures. Some £675 million is owed by 178 criminals who were each ordered to pay back £1 million or more after their conviction. Prosecutors are unable to force repayment by 45 offenders whose debts to the taxpayer total £225 million. Clearly, the law as currently written and the existing structures are not sufficiently able to deal with the way in which these proceeds are kept by the Mr Bigs who, having committed horrendous crimes, are able to continue with their life after prison and are not asked to pay back what they owe.

I am glad that the Government are proposing changes to the law. I recently had a letter from both the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Director of Public Prosecutions about a wish to examine default sentences, changing the definition of “confiscation” in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, amending the Bail Act 1976 to prevent absconding—once somebody is out of prison, there is no way in which they can be made to pay this money—implementing the EU Council framework decisions on the execution of orders freezing property or evidence, and making sure that agencies work together so that if someone has committed an offence, they do not rush out of the country because the Passport Office has given them a passport.

On money laundering, as the House knows, 85% of drugs profits are earned by distributors in the United States or Europe. The current estimate is that global drugs profits are £380 billion, the majority of which enters the financial system. Antonio Maria Costa, the former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has said:

“I cannot think of one bank in the world that has not been penetrated by mafia money.”

Banks with British bases, such as Coutts and HSBC, have been found guilty of money laundering.

As the Home Affairs Committee said recently, until these companies hear the rattling of handcuffs in their boardrooms, they will not take seriously the issue of drugs money within our financial systems. Indeed, we recommended new legislation to extend the personal criminal liability of those who hold the most senior positions in banks and are found to have been involved in money laundering. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw said, it is hoped that the new Financial Conduct Authority will be much tougher than the Financial Services Authority, which in our view did not do enough to deal with the issue.

Yesterday the Home Secretary reclassified khat as a class C drug because she believes that sales of it have entered our financial systems and fund Islamic extremist groups such as al-Shabaab. In January the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said there was “insufficient evidence” that khat caused health problems. The panel found “no evidence” that khat, made from the leaves and shoots of a shrub cultivated in the horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula, was directly linked with serious or organised crime. The problem is that once these drugs are banned, they go underground and the drugs barons are able to launder even more money.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) has raised the issue of Coventry football club. I do not want to go too far down that road, except to say that the parent company should be investigated. It set up two sub-companies, one of which went into administration and was then given by the administrator to the other company. It is a ludicrous situation for the people of Coventry to find themselves in: the fans are up in arms, they do not know where they are going to play next season and all sorts of threats are being made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

We will not discuss this now, but I am sure Mr Cunningham will remember it for the future.

[Keith Vaz]

I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) was going to tell me that the directors of Coventry City were chewing khat. I did not realise that he wanted to make another point.

In conclusion, I say to the Minister: let us look at the proceeds of crime and the way in which financial structures protect them, and let us use effective action through the structures of Government and the financial agencies to try to make sure that the Mr Bigs pay back the money they have stolen.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

In beginning this debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) pointed out that the responsibilities of the two Front Benchers relate to different Departments. The reason why I am speaking on behalf of the Opposition is that it is our view that too many of the matters under discussion are crimes, should be crimes, should be prosecuted and are not being prosecuted at the moment. My presence underlines the emphasis that the Opposition put on that.

We welcome the fact that tax evasion was on the agenda at the G8 and the Prime Minister is right that we need to pierce the corporate veil. Lack of transparency enables criminals to hide behind shell companies and launder the proceeds of crime. In our view, however, the Prime Minister left the heavy lobbying until too late and the international commitment to breaking down corporate secrecy was weak. In fact, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) has said, it was feeble. The G8 members only agreed to consider national registries of the beneficial ownership of companies, which, to be frank, is very little commitment at all.

What is the Government’s commitment to that registry? Will it be public? The hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) has said that the Prime Minister is on record as saying that he wants it to be public, but what does that mean? Will it be rigorous?

Every legal entity is ultimately controlled by a natural person—somebody who lives and breathes and who can go to jail if they do things wrong. Will there be a requirement that the information registered on beneficial ownership always includes a natural person? What penalties will there be for failing to supply the required information? Will there be an obligation to record the owner of bearer shares where the owner is not registered and the issuing firm does not track subsequent transfers of ownership? Will there be an obligation for companies that use nominee directors to reveal on whose behalf those directors are working?

We are told that the Government are reviewing all of this, but it seems to me that there is plenty of wiggle room. Will there be an obligation on the part of the registry to carry out due diligence on the information it receives? In practical terms, will Companies House have the resources to do that? Past studies have revealed that Companies House has not even had sufficient resources to routinely check company directors against a list of disqualified persons.

Will Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have the resources to investigate? HMRC currently faces £2 billion of funding cuts this Parliament, leading to a further 10,000 job cuts. Will the Crown Prosecution Service, also cut by more than 27%, have the resources to prosecute? Will the Government strengthen the regulation of corporate service providers that set up sham companies and straw-men directors? We do not know. Will we be told, and if so, when?

What we do know is that a future Labour Government will bring an end to the era of tax smoke and mirrors. As the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), and the shadow Exchequer Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), have set out in Labour’s policy review on corporate tax, the Government should ensure that HMRC has the power, resources and capacity it needs. They should also explore how their general anti-abuse rule can be strengthened. The Government should also deliver internationally agreed reporting rules so that large multinational companies have to publish the key pieces of information that people need to assess the amount of tax they pay.

We also need to look at the channels through which the laundered money goes. Of the 17 banks analysed by the FCA, half were found not to have proper processes to prevent money laundering. Four of those were UK banks. I was disappointed that the FCA did not name those banks and have written to it asking it to do so.

Many Members have referred to last year’s US Senate report, which found that HSBC had been used to launder the money of Mexican drug lords. It called HSBC a conduit for

“drug kingpins and rogue nations”.

The US Department of Justice fined HSBC £1.25 billion for money laundering. I am not aware that the UK authorities have taken any action on that, beyond requiring an improved monitoring regime. Of course, the chairman of HSBC at the time became the Minister for Trade and Investment in this Government and continued to be so until recently.

Whether it is LIBOR rigging, money laundering or sanctions evasion, the UK has been slow to investigate British banks. When it has punished them, the fines have been dwarfed by those imposed by the US. For example, Barclays was fined £101 million in the US for LIBOR rigging, whereas the Financial Services Authority in the UK fined it £60 million and the Serious Fraud Office is still investigating. The SFO prosecuted only 20 cases last year and convicted 14 individuals. In the past two years there has not been a single corporate prosecution.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point, which reflects what was said in the recent Home Affairs Committee report. However, there is an issue with the absence of personal liability, not just corporate liability. It is individuals who made the decisions.

[Emily Thornberry]

I am getting to that. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend.

Is it any wonder that KPMG has just reported that in the UK, fraud cases totalling more than £500 million were recorded in the first half of 2013, which is up by more than a quarter on the previous year?

We need a change of culture in our law enforcement agencies. We must equip them with the tools and resources that they need to get on the front foot. Under English law, companies are criminally liable only if it can be proved that a director was personally involved in the wrongdoing. That is an extremely high threshold—a problem to which the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) referred.

There is a good case for holding companies vicariously liable for their employees’ economic crimes, unless they can demonstrate that they had adequate compliance procedures. The last Labour Government did that in relation to bribery with the Bribery Act 2010. We want to build on that, but this Government want to water it down. They say, for some reason, that rules against bribery are red tape. That stopping people bribing one another can be seen as red tape is beyond belief.

If we change the law on corporate responsibility, we may see an increase in the number of companies that are prosecuted, so we must have a penalty structure that is worthy of receiving them. The highest fraud fine to result from an SFO prosecution is £2.2 million. The highest fine clinched by the US Department of Justice is larger than $3 billion. Why do we not introduce a system in which sentences are based on a percentage of the company’s turnover over the past three years?

Although the SFO’s problems are not entirely down to under-resourcing, resources are important because these crimes are expensive to investigate. Last year, the SFO’s budget was £34 million, compared with £40 million in 2009-10. In 2014-15, it will fall to only £30 million. It is so short of money that it has to go cap in hand to the Treasury whenever it wants to take over a major prosecution. That at least gives the impression that the Chancellor has a secret veto on whether fraud investigations take place.

The US approach of topping up the funds of fraud prosecutors is much more appealing. Where possible, confiscated assets are returned to the victims. The proceeds from the many cases in which the victims cannot be traced are poured into a central fund. Each year, teams of prosecutors bid for a portion of that fund for asset tracing and law enforcement investigations. We have the beginnings of such a system in the UK. We could extend that and put large fines or at least part of them into the pool as well. In these austere times, we need to explore such alternative means of funding.

Spending Review

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It is good to hear that the businesses of the west midlands and Halesowen and Rowley Regis are taking the opportunity to grow, expand and take people on. We are committed to the apprenticeship programme and are also committing to more local involvement in how money is spent through the Heseltine local growth pot, which will be £10 billion over the rest of the decade. Through some of our apprenticeship reforms set out in the Richard review, we will give the businesses my hon. Friend represents much greater influence over the kinds of skills that are taught locally.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I welcome the protection of the counter-terrorism budget, although I do not think the Chancellor’s claim that the Home Secretary is the best in a generation would necessarily win the vote among the police service. The Home Office budget as a whole will be cut by 7% and earlier this year the UK Border Agency was abolished by the Prime Minister. How will we get the backlog of more than 250,000 cases down if the budget is to be cut and mandarins at the Home Office still receive bonuses of several millions of pounds?

[Mr Osborne]

The Home Office saving is 6.1%, but my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has demonstrated that she can live with a tough budget—which is true of all Government Departments at the moment—while delivering real reforms and improving the service we get at the end of it. Crime has come down to a 30-year low and immigration has already come down by a third. If the House has to choose between public services that are completely unaffordable and bust the country and public services that do not deliver a good service, that is no choice at all. We are delivering good public services that the country can afford.

Draft European Union Budget

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I want to start with a small Euro whinge about the time available to discuss these important matters. When we discuss European affairs, it is important that we have more than one and a half hours. I have great respect for the Front-Bench spokesmen, but they took more than 45 minutes to put their cases, leaving very little time for those knowledgeable Back Benchers—I do not include myself; I would never want to praise myself—who want to make a contribution on these important matters.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who is obviously extremely knowledgeable about these issues, having sat on the budget committee of the European Parliament for many years before claiming asylum here in Westminster. I am sure that we should listen carefully to what he says about how the process operates. I would also be keen to see a copy of the DVD showing what goes on inside the EU that my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) offered to Members. I have not received a copy—perhaps the UK Independence party MEP decided to send it only to some Members.

I want to say three quick things, because I know that other Members want to contribute. The first, concerning migration issues, is directly relevant to the EU home affairs agenda. I would like to know from the Minister, if not today then certainly in writing, what part of the budget will be ring-fenced to help countries such as Greece to deal with the serious migration problems at their borders. I see that the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) is here. The Home Affairs Committee visited Fylakio, on the border of Greece and Turkey, where we saw the detention centres in which many of these refugees and asylum seekers live. The conditions were appalling, and we were told that more than 100,000 people crossed the border between Greece and Turkey every year.

Obviously we would like an improvement in the living conditions of those who arrive in Greece, but more than that we would like to prevent these illegal migrants from coming into Greece in the first place. As Members will know, the destination of choice for those 100,000 people who cross the border into the EU is not Greece. They are only kept in detention for six months, and they then travel to Athens and end up in northern and western Europe, particularly the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries.

We know that Greece is having huge problems, but I would like an assurance that some of the money in the budget will be ring-fenced for issues of concern to this country. If we are to deal with illegal migration, it is much better to do so at the far borders of the EU, rather than allowing it to be a problem for us here, with all the issues and political controversies that it raises when we debate it. Is any of that budget to be ring-fenced?

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I wonder whether the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs recalls that when we went to Greece we came across a young lady from Latin America who had almost accidentally got caught up in the Greek illegal immigration system. She was desperate to go back, but the EU funds could not be used for that purpose, however much we made the case to the European Commission representative there. In the end, we had to get assistance from the Norwegian Government, whose funds did not require domestic Greek matching funds. Should we therefore not also deal with that issue?

[Keith Vaz]

That is absolutely right. I do remember that young lady. She made a beeline for the hon. Gentleman—he was single at the time, I think, and—

[Mark Reckless]

I must clarify the position: I believe it was my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) for whom she made a beeline.

[Keith Vaz]

We did not give notice of that allegation, so we had better not pursue it. However, the hon. Gentleman is right: the issue he raises is another area that can be looked at as a possible means of dealing with this important subject.

The second issue—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) keeps reminding me that I said I would speak for three minutes, and my time is now almost up. Let me therefore ask the Minister to look at the cost of enlargement. I am a great supporter of enlargement. When I was Minister for Europe, my job was to go to the European Union, as Tony Blair told me to, and ensure that we became best friends with all the countries in eastern Europe that sought to come into the European Union, and that is what I sought to do. I am therefore very much in favour of enlargement, but I am a bit worried by some of the figures for the cost of it. Croatia has been promised €150 million, while Turkey, which is not even a member, has been given €3 billion. We all support Turkish membership, but I am worried about all the money that is going to candidate countries and the possibility that we do not know precisely what is happening to it.

[Mr Hoban]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Last week the Commission proposed a €10 billion increase in the financial framework to cover the cost of Croatia’s admission. However, it should find that money from the existing budget, rather than loading additional costs on to taxpayers across all 28 member states, as they will become.

[Keith Vaz]

I am pleased to hear that the Minister is seized of the issue, and presumably he resisted that attempt to increase the budget. However, we seem to be giving a lot of money to some of the other potential candidate countries—Iceland, Serbia and Montenegro, as well as Turkey, of course—without knowing precisely what the benchmarks are. We should therefore look at that issue in the budget.

My final point relates to the Europe 2020 strategy and the benchmarks set when it was created, starting with the Lisbon agenda, which was agreed in 2000. Are we sure that enough of that money is going on growth and jobs in the European Union? There are other issues that need to be dealt with, but ensuring more jobs and growth is the key to getting Europe out of its current mess.

Banking Reform

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. As I have said, the Bank and the FSA are looking at prudential and conduct requirements to ensure that they are proportionate. However, the other thing I would say is that the implicit guarantee enjoyed by our bigger banks distorts competition. Our reforms tackle that, helping to create a more level playing field for new entrants and enabling them to compete properly with established players.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that four weeks ago today the liquidation of the largest bank to have gone bust in Britain—BCCI—was completed, after 21 years. The foundation of the system introduced by the last, Labour Government was the Bingham report. The first part has been published; the second part is still confidential. As far as I know, only successive Chancellors have read it. Has the Minister read the second, confidential part, and does he not think it is time to publish it, so that we can have a proper understanding of the reforms that he has set before the House today?

[Mr Hoban]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman has raised this matter on a number of occasions, and I am not going to give a different answer from those that I or the Chancellor have given before.