Finance Bill

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali]

The noble Lord Mandelson said that those people should pay taxes, and when my party was in power we brought unemployment down. That is what I urge the hon. Gentleman’s party to act on. I urge the Government, instead of defending bankers’ bonuses, to think about the 3 million people who are out of work. That is the responsibility of his party and his Government. He should talk to them about solving the current problems, instead of looking backwards.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

When we are talking about banksters—to use a term that was coined as far back as 1932 by an Irish-American radio priest—we are talking not just about people who are filthy rich, but about people who are filthy rich by foul means. They have engaged in rackets, they get paid in packets. Why do they deserve a cut in their taxes?

[Rushanara Ali]

They do not deserve a cut in taxes. I hope the Government will take serious action, otherwise the public, who already feel this way, will rightly believe that this Government are not for them but for the vested interests and the millionaires who make so much money and are not willing to pay their dues or to make the appropriate contribution. I am sure the Government do not want to be on the side of people who are milking the system and making so much money and not making the appropriate contribution.

I call on the Government to pay attention, to listen not just to my party, but to the millions of young people who want a job and an opportunity to make a contribution to this country. We have a plan that could help get them get into real work and would reward those who work hard—a plan that is costed and paid for by asking some of the wealthiest in our society to contribute just a little more. With the economy back in a double-dip recession and economic confidence so low that investment growth has virtually ground to a halt, job opportunities for these young people desperate to find work will not appear without help. I hope the Government will see sense and give young people in Britain the much-needed support that they deserve, by supporting the new clause.

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[Mr Hoban]

We have taken action to tackle the bonus culture by ensuring that the interests of shareholders and management are aligned and that where there is wrongdoing bonuses can be clawed back. That is a significant change that has happened since this Government came to office. In the same way that we are remedying the regulatory failures left behind by the previous Government, particularly by the shadow Chancellor, the inquiry set up into the fixing of LIBOR will ensure that in future LIBOR is regulated to fill the hole in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and ensure that there are criminal penalties for manipulating LIBOR—again, filling the hole left by the shadow Chancellor when he designed the regulatory system.

[Mark Durkan]

The Minister refers to what the Government have done since coming to office. What did the then Opposition suggest in the previous two Parliaments by way of concrete proposals on regulation or bonus culture or amendments to any of the flawed measures that the previous Government introduced?

[Mr Hoban]

When the previous Government brought forward the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, we voted against the decision to transfer the supervision of the banks from the Bank of England to the FSA. We are putting right that failure by the previous Government. We criticised the financial services reforms brought forward by the previous Government in the aftermath of the financial crisis. We said that they were tinkering around the edges and did not address the fundamental problems at the heart of regulation. The work that we did in opposition laid the foundations for a much tougher, more intrusive and more interventionist regulatory regime to tackle the problems left by the previous Government.