Mark Durkan
Main Page: Mark Durkan (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Foyle)Department Debates - View all Mark Durkan's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
The Chancellor has repeated that the FSA confirmed that UK banks are better capitalised and more liquid than many of their European counterparts. Is that assurance enough for him and how assured is he about the level of UK banks’ exposure to sovereign debt in the eurozone?
Mr Osborne
As the hon. Gentleman will understand, that has been kept under close surveillance at the Treasury—certainly for as long as I have been Chancellor, and no doubt before. We are well aware of the exposure of UK banks to the eurozone peripherals. However, we have satisfied ourselves that even with those exposures—as I said, the FSA has made much of the information public—banks such as RBS are well capitalised and liquid and do not have the kinds of problems that some banks on the continent have.