Matt Hancock
Main Page: Matt Hancock (Conservative - West Suffolk)Department Debates - View all Matt Hancock's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
In conducting its most recent assessment of the UK economy, the IMF explicitly looked at unconventional monetary policy tools that are currently being used, and concluded that quantitative easing was having a positive impact. I think that we should welcome that. I believe that we are able to pursue loose monetary policy—that we are able to use all the tools that are available to us on the monetary policy side—precisely because we have international credibility on the fiscal side.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
21. I, too, warmly welcome the action of the Bank of England last week to increase liquidity in its liquidity auction, but should not the role of the Financial Policy Committee be not only to stand against procyclical financial policy and liquidity buffers, but to lean against the wind and make sure that we can get the lending to businesses in our constituencies?
Mr Osborne
The Government established the Financial Policy Committee because under the previous tripartite regime, designed and implemented by the shadow Chancellor, absolutely no one was paying attention to overall levels of debt and credit in the economy. That is why we had such a deep recession, and why we went from such a large boom to such a big bust—to coin a phrase. My hon. Friend is entirely right: the FPC should be symmetrical in the way in which it looks at risks. We have made that clear, and we are amending the Financial Services Bill in the House of Lords to ensure that that the FPC has, as a secondary objective, due regard for the Government’s broader economic policy.