Lord De Mauley
Main Page: Lord De Mauley (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Myners
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s repeat of the response to the Urgent Question in the other place; it is good that we have this information before the Mansion House speech tonight. I also welcome the appointment of Sir John Vickers, a man ideally suited to chair this commission.
The speech by the right honourable gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer is charged with political overtones. It seeks to rewrite history. The Chancellor must rise to the standards and callings of his office and focus more on the future and the strategic issues and challenges rather than making cheap political points. This ill becomes a holder of one of the great offices of state. He must remember that, now the election is over, he has a duty to govern and perform an effective ministerial role and no longer act as a purely political spokesman. We want leadership from this Chancellor of the Exchequer, not soundbites.
A clear error in the Statement is a reference to the support that the taxpayers provided to the banking system, but no reference at all to the fact that the taxpayers now have a gain on the support that they showed to the banking system in excess of £10 billion, a considerable amount of money that could, for instance, be used to capitalise a new bank to support lending to SMEs.
The devil as always is in the detail. One of the problems with the commission is that its report will be too late. As my noble friend Lord Eatwell said, the Seoul meeting of the G20 will be the critical decision-maker on the structure of banking globally, yet this report will come well after Seoul. Surely it is right that there should be an interim report from Sir John Vickers before Seoul, so that we can test the Government’s position in Seoul against the recommendations coming forward from Sir John Vickers and his group.
I have a number of questions, which I raise with some fear that they may not be answered. We are still waiting for answers from the noble Lord, Lord Henley, to questions asked during the Queen’s Speech debate and an answer from the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, in relation to the debate on competitiveness. It is unfortunate to see that the Treasury is already lagging in terms of response to questions.
Will the Minister explain where macro-prudential regulation morphs into micro-prudential oversight? In the first sentence the Minister says that macro-prudential regulation should never have been taken away from the Bank of England, but in the second sentence he says that the Government are still developing their thinking on macro-prudential supervision.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, perhaps I may remind noble Lords that, although brief comments and questions from all quarters of the House are allowed, Statements should not be made the occasion for an immediate debate.
Lord Myners
I am asking questions, as I have made clear. I am just into the third minute and I beg the House’s indulgence to ask one or two other questions.