Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We have published an impact assessment, an equalities assessment and a distributional analysis of the measures we produced in the Budget. None of those were ever produced by any Labour Chancellor, so we continue to provide the information that people seek. What matters above all is getting the central judgment right about fixing our economy, making sure we deal with our deficit, and going on delivering economic security for the people the right hon. Lady represents.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Chancellor is fond of telling us about 2 million more people in employment, and then he usually does a little facial lap of honour of the Chamber. Has he estimated how many of those 2 million people would be hit by his proposed changes to tax credits? How many would he be comfortable with still hitting in any revised changes?

[Mr Osborne]

The measures to save welfare—as I say, we will help with the transition—come alongside the increase in the national living wage, the increase in the personal allowance and the action we have taken to cut social rents. They are all part of a package that is delivering economic security to the people in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman remembers what the situation was like five or six years ago in Northern Ireland: high unemployment, a lack of business investment and people looking for work. Now we are in a situation where jobs are being created and people are finding work. Do I say that everything has been done that needs to be done? Absolutely not. We have more to do to bring jobs and investment to Northern Ireland. Let us work together to make that happen.

EU Budget (Surcharge)

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

At a time when budgets are tough, I completely understand why people want the maximum amount of money possible to be spent at home, but the truth is that we have been able to get a reduction in the EU budget because of the tough negotiations of the British Prime Minister. That is what we are able to achieve by standing up for Britain’s interests in Europe.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Will the Chancellor help us better to understand what he is presenting as a masterful feat by telling us: what he did not know; when and for how long he did not know it; and why he did not know it?

[Mr Osborne]

It was not clear that this exceptional demand for a payment would have the British rebate applied or indeed to what extent the rebate would be applied. The amount was confirmed to us only last Thursday evening.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I congratulate him on the work that he has done to bring that investment into his constituency, and to create jobs and opportunities for the people whom he represents. It is important for us to send a message to the world that we are open for business and open to investment, and because we are doing that, we are now a go-to destination for world investment. Can my hon. Friend imagine the impact on jobs and investment in his constituency if we adopted the Labour party’s approach?

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

May we have an update on the Chancellor’s intention to introduce a new regime for annually managed expenditure? Will the overall welfare cap of which he has spoken include a cap within a cap for welfare spending in Northern Ireland?

[Mr Osborne]

We are not proposing a cap within a cap, as the hon. Gentleman puts it, but we are proposing a welfare cap. We have set out the details of the benefits and the annually managed expenditure that will be part of the cap, but we will announce further details about the level of it at fiscal events later this year.

Spending Review

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I know that my hon. Friend has been a campaigner on social care issues. This is probably one of the most transformative announcements in the statement. The Health Secretary and the Local Government Secretary will set out shortly how it will work, but it will involve the local commissioning of social care services jointly by the NHS and local government to try to end the divide between the two services that people fall into. I am sure that my hon. Friend’s expertise will be drawn on, because she knows a lot about the subject.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Chancellor outlined a new annually managed expenditure regime. Will he colour that in a little, particularly as regards Northern Ireland? Does he intend Northern Ireland to have its own separate welfare cap? How is it to be fixed? Will it take account of the higher rates of disability and long-term conditions in Northern Ireland or will the cap be used to try to taper Northern Ireland’s higher spending on those benefits?

[Mr Osborne]

The welfare cap will be for the United Kingdom, as we have a UK welfare system. It certainly will not be used to target Northern Ireland in particular. We want to ensure that more people in Northern Ireland have the opportunity to work and to get off benefits and although the subject has not featured in these questions, some of the changes we have announced to the jobcentre regime will help in this regard. We will ensure that they are suitably applied in Northern Ireland.

Autumn Statement

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Of course I welcome the Chancellor’s confirmation of ultra-fast broadband for Digital Derry, and the announcements on the carbon price floor and the fuel duty, but I am afraid that on personal taxation and benefits, the Chancellor is becoming something of a fiscal drag artist.

On another tax front, I welcome the fact that he has cut through all the Treasury excusery against the general anti-abuse rule, but surely it needs to be more robust. If it is going to be a meaningful priority of the G8 presidency to co-ordinate members against corporate tax conjuring, the Chancellor surely has to start by revisiting the controlled foreign company rules that he made in the last Budget.

[Mr Osborne]

First, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support of our decision to provide ultra-fast broadband to Derry/Londonderry, and I congratulate the city on a very good bid, which competed against other bids across the UK. He is also right to say that we are helping the Northern Ireland energy sector with decisions on the carbon price floor, which I did not have space in my statement to announce, but they are in the book. I am glad that he acknowledges those aspects. More broadly, Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK will benefit when we help people who work hard and want to get on with the personal allowance and when we help small businesses and motorists with the fuel duty. We are doing all these things and are making sure that they apply to Northern Ireland as well.

Professional Standards in the Banking Industry

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I will give way in a moment, but let me explain what the FCA’s chief executive-designate will do. It is very important. He will work swiftly and report this summer, so that the Financial Services Bill, which is currently before Parliament, can if necessary be amended and the regulators can acquire the new powers that they need. Yesterday, he responded to the damning FSA report into the failure of RBS with plans for new sanctions for the directors of failed banks, including the possibility of criminal sanctions. I speak for hon. Members on both sides of the House when I say that, sadly, there is a stark difference between the powers available to the UK authorities and those available to their US counterparts. We need to correct that.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Does the Chancellor accept that the Wheatley review can proceed to do its work and inform changes to the Financial Services Bill without prejudice to the inquiry that the Opposition seek in motion 2? The motion does not prevent the Wheatley review, so using the review as an argument against the motion is a red herring.

[Mr Osborne]

I was not using the Wheatley review as a reason not to have a public or parliamentary inquiry. I was merely explaining the review for the people out there who care what the Government are doing to regulate the financial markets and who want to hear what we are doing urgently to deal with the transparency and integrity of the LIBOR market.

LIBOR (FSA Investigation)

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right. I remember sitting at the Mansion House listening to the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), telling us in 2007 about the golden age of the City, just before the City imploded.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Does the Chancellor recognise that many of us observed for a number of years that the competition between the Front Benches in the House seemed to be based on saying, “Our touch is lighter than yours”? The public believe that Parliament and parties have indulged the banksterism that is now all too apparent. The failure and inadequacy of legislation were a failure by Parliament, not just of Government. Is an inquiry that will be a Whips’ stitch-up, with fairly narrow terms of reference, really an adequate response to the public concerns out there?

[Mr Osborne]

In the end, the conclusion of the inquiry will command the confidence of the House only if it is a unanimous report. The Labour party will be able to choose its members. If it is a divided report along partisan lines, people will see that. I hope the joint inquiry comes forward with a unanimous report. As I say, that would be the way to proceed. A public inquiry would take months to establish and a year or two years to report; in Northern Ireland we have had inquiries that have gone on even longer. There would then be a Government response, a Government White Paper and Government legislation. We would be standing here in 2016 or 2017 dealing with a scandal that had happened a decade earlier.

LIBOR (FSA Investigation)

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. As I said, this is an incredibly important industry for our future, despite the problems that the banking sector in particular has caused in our recent past. It is important that we do not taint the entire financial services industry with what went wrong. That industry includes insurance companies and all sorts of other businesses that were not involved, but the banks themselves, as the most prominent institutions in the industry, have a huge responsibility to change their culture and image with the rest of the country.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

What we are looking at essentially is daily daylight robbery, with a culture that said, “Anything goes, but nobody knows”. In light of what we do know, would it not be a dereliction to introduce the Financial Services Bill without specifically addressing LIBOR and looking again at the data competence of the regulators? Without wishing to draw the Chancellor on what criminal charges might be brought, does he believe that the forfeiture committee should look at the cases of other bankers who may be implicated?

[Mr Osborne]

The part of the country that the hon. Gentleman represents has been affected perhaps more than any other by what went wrong in financial services. Northern Ireland has suffered enormously from the failure of banks in the UK and in the Republic, and it has paid perhaps a heavier price than anyone else, so he speaks with authority and passion on this. Let me make it absolutely clear: we are going to deal with the regulation of LIBOR, and we will choose the most appropriate vehicle. The Financial Services Bill has been introduced in the House, so it is a convenient vehicle but, as I said, let us introduce the right regulation and get this right after its having gone spectacularly wrong in the past. As for the forfeiture committee, it is completely independent of the politicians of the day, he will be glad to know. No doubt, its members will have heard what he said.

Financial Services Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The right hon. Gentleman keeps saying there were two people, but there were three principals in the tripartite committee. It was chaired by the Chancellor of the day—the Chancellor whom he advised—but as I understand it, that Chancellor never convened the tripartite regime at the principal level. [Interruption.] I can tell the shadow Chancellor that under the tripartite regime now—that is still the current arrangement—there are meetings on at least a monthly basis with myself, the Governor of the Bank, the chairman of the FSA and so on. In the tripartite system that the shadow Chancellor saw at first hand, the principals, including the Chancellor of the day, never in 10 years—we are not talking about 10 weeks or 10 months—convened a meeting of the principals. The fact that he says that it was entirely the job of the Governor of the Bank of England or the chairman of the FSA to call a meeting, when the chair was the Chancellor, who could have called a meeting at any time he wanted, is very revealing about what went wrong.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Is the power to direct, to which the Chancellor has referred, contingent on the Governor of the Bank of England formally advising the Chancellor of a material risk, or could the Chancellor exercise that power to direct on the basis of his own concerns, which may have been conveyed to him from the industry, Parliament or any other intelligence? The Bank might be loth to advise the Chancellor formally in that way if doing so would trigger the power to direct, because it might want to avoid that, and the wider concerns that it might raise. Once the Bank has had the “Shall we tell the Chancellor?” discussion, what should the Treasury representative do during that discussion and after it?

[Mr Osborne]

As I have said, when the Bill is passed, the statutory responsibility will be on the Bank of England to inform the Government if there is a material risk that public funds might be used. We are trying to get away from a system in which it is the Treasury’s responsibility to try to regulate the financial system on a day-to-day basis in peacetime. We are giving the responsibility and clear accountability to the Bank of England so that it will trigger the arrangement by informing us of a material risk. As is set out in the legislation, twice-yearly meetings between the Chancellor and the Governor to discuss these things are required, although there could also be further meetings. Once the Bank has informed the Treasury of a material risk, which it will have a statutory responsibility to do, there will be a power of direction. I should just say, for the sake of completeness, that if we wish to keep the details of the use of this power confidential, I or my successors would have to inform, on a confidential basis, the Chairs of the Treasury Committee and the Public Accounts Committee, so that representatives of Parliament were informed.

The fourth and final flaw in the system that we are trying to address is that customers and consumers too often get a raw deal from the regulation of financial services. The disappearance from the high street of names such as HBOS and Bradford & Bingley has inevitably reduced competition in an industry that was becoming more and more consolidated even before the crash. The existing regulator’s dual prudential and consumer remit means that it cannot give consumer interests its undivided attention. In response to the Vickers commission and the Joint Committee, the new authority will have an explicit responsibility to promote competition. We have listened to the Joint Committee and announced that we will also bring the regulation of consumer credit into the authority’s remit so that, for the first time, the regulation of all retail financial services will be under one roof, and things like payday loans will be subject to tougher regulation.

Autumn Statement

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I am very happy to look at ideas to enhance the business growth fund, which is principally operated by the banks, under which they have committed to invest in the equity of small companies. We have already announced the seed enterprise investment scheme, which will help angel investments in companies. I am glad that my hon. Friend supports the commitment that we made to the new crossing at the lower Thames.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Chancellor has proclaimed support for business and jobs in the present climate. He also puts at a premium innovation, productivity and exports. Do his plans therefore extend to assisting firms in the sterling zone—I am talking particularly about the areas of medical devices, life sciences and sustainable technologies—that are finding the flow and scale of orders from eurozone countries compromised and the reliability of payments damaged because of austerity measures in those countries?

[Mr Osborne]

I am not sure that I agree with the hon. Gentleman that austerity measures are to blame, but I certainly agree that that is a real problem. Of course one of the consequences of the ongoing eurozone crisis has been an increase in bank funding costs across the European continent. The further disruption to the financial system is having an impact on exports to the eurozone, which is one of the reasons that this crisis is having a chilling effect on the British economy. Later today, I will be going to another meeting of European Finance Ministers in Brussels to try to get a better resolution of the problems.

Eurozone

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.

The Economy

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right. The debt interest payments would have increased to £180 million a day if we had not pursued our current policies. That became one of the largest Budget items under the Labour Government. Deficit reduction has avoided the interest payments that we would have had under Labour.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Chancellor will be aware that Ireland is locked into a serious deficit reduction plan. He may also be aware that next week, as part of its budget for jobs, a targeted VAT cut to 9% will kick in for the tourism sector and last for 18 months. It follows similar cuts made by France and Germany to 7% and 5.5% respectively. Does he rule out targeted VAT cuts to support jobs and growth in particular sectors at the same time as deficit reduction, because that is what other countries are doing?

[Mr Osborne]

We put forward in the Budget targeted cuts for business. We are cutting corporation tax by 2% this year and a further 3% in coming years. We have put in place more generous research and development tax credits to help businesses. We have cut the small companies tax rate—

Banking

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I must say that it is a slightly depressing thought that the appointment of the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd as shadow Parliamentary Private Secretary means that this will be a constant feature of the encounters in the House between me and the shadow Chancellor, but there we go.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) makes a very good point. There are, of course, legions of quotes from former Labour Ministers including the shadow Chancellor about the light-touch regime, how they were resisting calls in Parliament to strengthen it and all of that. Quite a few of them, of course, have gone off to work in the banking sector since leaving Parliament.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Does the Chancellor not accept that he may be overselling as transparency something that is really just temporary and limited translucency on bonuses, credit and lending to business? What guarantees are there that the Bank of England will not just report on the aggregate of the money available but will examine the prices and conditions involved? Will he also guarantee that if businesses are relieved by credit granted, they will not be floored by tax demanded?

[Mr Osborne]

First, on transparency, at the moment we have a voluntary commitment by the largest British banks, and we are going to turn that into a legislative requirement on all the major banks operating in the UK. We will bring forward proposals over the coming year to consult on that, as we have to do under the statutory procedures, but my intention has been made clear.

Bank charges and so on are properly not a responsibility of the Bank of England at the moment. It is going to focus on collecting the numbers. However, we are creating a strong consumer protection and markets authority—there will be legislation before the House on that, and a very good chief executive-designate has been hired. He will ensure that the customer gets a fair deal as well.

Comprehensive Spending Review

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I can assure my hon. Friend that I am planning a long-term relationship with Prudence.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Can the Chancellor assure us that the green investment bank will be active and accessible to all regions, including Northern Ireland, and that relevant projects will not be disqualified by virtue of having a cross-border character? That would be entirely appropriate, given our market and environmental context.

[Mr Osborne]

In my statement, I set aside £1 billion of direct Government funding for the green investment bank. That will, I hope, be the minimum sum. I also want to dispose of certain Government assets and put the money from those sales into the bank, but I wanted to provide a minimum of £1 billion in case those asset sales took longer to realise than we hoped. I also want to lever in private sector investment so that the bank is a very successful vehicle for helping all parts of the United Kingdom invest in green energy. I am very happy to consider the case for cross-border projects because, obviously, the economies of Ireland and Northern Ireland are very closely linked, and I will come back to the hon. Gentleman on that specific point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Durkan and George Osborne

Tuesday 8th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Our plan is to increase employment in this country by putting the public finances on a sound footing. It is about time the Labour party understood that it left behind the largest budget deficit in the EU and the G20. All over the world, people are looking at sovereign credit risks. This Government are determined to do something about the problem before people start looking at Britain.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Chancellor could take the opportunity today to spell out to us how he and his coalition colleagues hope to popularise their cuts agenda. We seem to be being told that the public will be consulted on which spending should continue and which cuts might be made. How will that “axe factor” approach to government play out?

[Mr Osborne]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the pun—but this is a very serious national challenge, which whoever won the election was going to have to face. The 11% budget deficit will not disappear. A very large part of it is structural, and so will not automatically reduce as growth returns to the economy. We want to make sure that all political parties, including his, and the brightest and best brains across Whitehall and the public sector, as well as voluntary groups, think-tanks, trade unions and members of the public, are all engaged in the debate and discussion about how, collectively, we deal with the problem. After all, it is our collective national debt.