Royal Bank of Scotland

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I understand the attraction of that argument. The hon. Gentleman is an economist of fine standing, and his point, which was also made by the hon. Member for Edmonton, is one to which we would all like the answer yes, but it is not as simple as that. The reality is that the value of a share is what people are prepared to pay for it. We know what the value of RBS is at present. A lot of actions were taken within RBS that might have been right for the UK economy but not have added to the value of the share price. If we are expecting RBS to act in the interests of the UK, that may not always be right for their share price.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jeremy Quin]

I will, but let me make one final point in rebutting the point made by hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan), and then I am sure the hon. Gentleman will have another go. The Rothschild report is thorough—it is bigger than the two pages produced by the Governor of the Bank of England—and sets out why the taxpayer can expect to at the very least break even and probably make an overall profit on their investment in the banking system. That is a remarkable achievement, given that back in 2009, when the Labour party was in government, the Treasury was talking about a £20 billion to £50 billion loss.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing this debate. I totally agree with her that, given the fact that RBS is a major public asset and that its proposed sale is of huge significance, the level of both public and parliamentary debates has been very limited. This debate will at least go some way towards addressing that.

I will not labour that point, but I will start from the perspective of the taxpayer, who has a huge interest in the issue. There are two specific but overlapping interests. The first, which has already been debated, is the issue of recouping the money the taxpayer has invested in the bank. The second is the need to ensure that, even if the bank is sold, it supports the wider community interest and the overall economy in a way that will boost the economy and future tax receipts. The sale as mooted does not seem to do either of those things.

I am grateful to the New Economics Foundation for some of the figures I will mention. From February 2014 to February 2015, RBS traded at an average of 349p per share, way below the UK Financial Investments assessment of the 482p per share needed to recoup the taxpayers’ investment. If we also consider the additional uncertainties about the costs of fines and litigation related to the mis-selling of products and the manipulation of LIBOR, we will see that there is a big question mark over what the market will stand.

Failure to recoup taxpayers’ money might, in certain circumstances, be justified if the returns from the capital receipt contributed substantially to public finances. The Government have committed themselves to using the money raised from the sale to pay off public debt, but, as things stand, interest rates are low and the amount that would be paid off would be modest. It is reasonable for the House to ask for an exercise to be completed calculating the amount that would be paid off compared with the amount the taxpayer may get as a result of restructuring the bank and of the investment in our wider economy and the increased tax receipts that would generate. That would not be a simple exercise, but, given the significance of the proposed sale of the bank, it is reasonable to expect the Government to perform it and to put it before the public and Parliament before they justify their decision.

I will make a few comments about the financial services industry in general. Britain is a world leader, and I would not wish in any way to detract from the industry’s crucial position in the economy. However, in fulfilling its secondary objective of underpinning growth in the rest of the economy, it has been much less successful and lags behind many of the banking services of our key international competitors. UK banks have increasingly favoured lending to other banks and for real estate, rather than to production sectors of the economy such as construction, manufacturing, transport, communications and retailing.

That has really been brought home to me by recent events. It is ironic: we have a Government who talk about the status of our financial services industry and are philosophically and ideologically committed to the free market and the capitalist process of wealth creation, yet when we need major investment in infrastructure and regional development, they have to cosy up to China, the foremost communist country on the globe. I do not think that there can be any clearer demonstration of the total dysfunctionality of our financial services market.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

It is ironic that the Government are intent on privatising, yet when they privatise they often sell off British assets to foreign Governments. Nationalisation is all right so long as assets go to a foreign Government, not to the British Government.

[Mr Bailey]

I take my hon. Friend’s point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bailey]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention reinforces the sheer incoherence, inconsistency and irony of the Government’s policies towards the financial sector.

I want to speak for a few moments about small and medium-sized enterprises. The Government talk about rebalancing the economy, first from service industries to manufacturing and then from London and the south-east to other regions. If we look at the economy, we see that that must be done through SMEs. They constitute 90% of our businesses, 60% of employment and 50% of output. Although those in manufacturing may represent only 12% of our total GDP, they are hugely significant and crucial to driving up productivity and in our export performance, which are key pillars in driving forward our economy.

It would be reasonable to look at our financial services sector to see what it delivers to help to drive forward the economy. Finance and investment are the fuel for this engine of growth, but the problem is that the fuel is flowing in exactly the wrong direction. Despite Government schemes to boost investment loans to small businesses, the number of such loans has declined. The level of lending is highest in London, which has the smallest manufacturing sector and the largest service sector, and lowest in the regions, where there is a higher proportion of manufacturing. Take my own region of the west midlands, the region with the highest manufacturing output: it receives 9% of investment while London receives 20%.

As was articulated by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton, one of the reasons behind the situation is the decline of branch banking. We have an over-centralised system. The demise of local banking and the growth of digitalisation have led to a consequential reduction in the local knowledge and insight required to understand the needs of both local communities and local business.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Bailey]

I will, but I am conscious that other Members wish to speak.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

It is tragic that Britain’s manufacturing as a proportion of GDP is about half that of Germany’s. Germany has used its banks properly; we have not. We now have an absolutely enormous balance of trade deficit simply because we cannot produce enough for our own use.

[Mr Bailey]

That was a well-timed intervention because my next comment was going to be that the opposite is true in countries such as Germany, where there is a tradition of regional banking, local engagement and long-term support for small businesses.

We would reasonably expect the Government, given their stated policy objectives of rebalancing the economy and boosting our exports and productivity, to look at the banking system as a whole and, given their ownership of RBS, to consider what they could do to address the gap in the market and achieve their policy objectives. Even their flagship British Business Bank seems to be replicating the sort of business-support models that have not previously worked. That market failure has led to the growth—I might add that that growth is very welcome—in community finance companies and peer-to-peer lending. They are playing a vital role in providing sources of finance in ways not addressed by the major, highly concentrated banks in this country. We would reasonably expect a Government who own RBS to look at its potential to support businesses.

The alternative Government policy seems to be to correct market failures through local enterprise partnerships and the regional growth schemes, some of which have been quite successful. One of the most successful schemes, operating through a community development finance institution under a £60 million regional growth fund programme, has outperformed nearly all other RGF schemes. What will happen? Nobody knows, because there is no commitment to fund it after 2016. The Government are selling off a bank that they control to the private sector, which has no record of supporting the very areas of business we most need for economic growth yet they are neglecting the sector that can deliver such investment.

In February, the British Business Bank commissioned a report on the community development finance sector. The report was supposed to be ready in time for the comprehensive review, but there has been a four-month delay and no report has yet been made. The sector therefore has no idea what its future funding support will be in continuing very effectively to deliver investment for small businesses that are being neglected by the existing banking sector.

To summarise quickly, we have a banking sector that is brilliant at making money, but fails to use its strength for the rest of the economy. The sector is over-centralised and fails to reflect the diversity of provision needed to meet the wider demands of our economy. Government schemes have failed to reach their full potential because they use existing banking structures. Where alternative structures exist, banks do not engage as they should. That is a major obstacle to delivering the Government’s policy objectives on exports, productivity and regional growth. In that context, the Government have a window of opportunity to make a change, and they have an enormous investment in a significant bank with the potential to drive such a change.

As it currently stands, the policy decision is based on political expediency, rather than the needs of the economy or the stated objectives of Government policy. Indeed, it actually contradicts elements of Government policy. I support the motion because it is time to think again.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Some lessons of history are so well established as to virtually be axioms: the Government ought not to own banks and private enterprises ought not to be bailed out by the taxpayer. Unfortunately, the Government do own banks and those banks were bailed out by the taxpayer. I think that the taxpayer bail-outs, which involved the privatisation of profit combined with the socialisation of risk, together with all the conduct issues that we all know so well, have done a great deal to undermine faith in the market economy, which we know is the only way to sustain billions of people on the face of the earth.

Some of the issues that have come up today go to the heart of how we should structure a market economy. In my view, in a market economy there should be a plurality of ownership models for banks. One of the great mistakes of the 1980s was the demutualisation of building societies. [Interruption.] I see my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) nodding furiously in agreement, for which I am grateful. As a teenager, I knew instinctively that the mutual model aligned interests in a way that the shareholder model did not. I was opposed to the demutualisation, or carpet-bagging as it was called, that went on then. These days, I have more theoretical grounding for my views and I certainly believe that we should have a more diverse banking sector, with more mutuals and co-operatives.

I should say briefly that the systemic problems that have affected the entire banking system around the world, irrespective of ownership models, are symptomatic of far deeper problems in the institutional arrangement of money and banking, which I have talked about at great length on other occasions.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The problems around the world derive from the fact that we have a globalised financial system with no boundaries between countries, so money can flow freely around the world. Had we been insulated from what happened in America, we might have survived rather better.