Oral Answers to Questions

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

First, it is not unpopular with business. Business groups have welcomed it, and the fact is that some aspects of our employment law can stand in the way of job creation. The OBR estimates that within the scorecard period this policy will cost £80 million in 2017-18. We believe it is the right move in order to ensure we have a more competitive environment.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

12. If he will take steps to open up dark pool trades on the UK equity markets to greater transparency.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Clark)]

The regulation of dark pools is subject to the markets in financial instruments directive, which is currently undergoing legislative review. The Government are negotiating to ensure that all dark pools are subject to regulatory oversight and that appropriate transparency measures are applied to them. However, we believe that dark pools provide a valuable service to pension funds and other investors and that regulation should not prohibit that.

[Natascha Engel]

Dark pools have that name for a reason: they are murky and not transparent, allowing financial institutions to buy and sell shares without anybody seeing what they are doing. Why will the Minister not just apply the same rules to dark pool trades as are applied to the open stock market, where everybody can see exactly what is sold, when it is sold, to whom it is sold and at what cost?

--- Later in debate ---

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

T8. Perfectly viable businesses up and down the country are going bust while the Government meet the Financial Services Authority and the banks on an ongoing basis to try to come to a conclusion on interest-rate swaps, so I have a suggestion that might focus their minds and make them arrive at a decision more quickly. Why will the right hon. Gentleman not take steps to allow a moratorium on paying back loans that include interest-rate swaps? That would make everybody come to a decision very quickly and help perfectly viable businesses during the recession.

[Greg Clark]

In answer to an earlier question, I said that I have written to all of the banks and asked them—and they have agreed—to forbear on charging businesses where these matters are in dispute and if the company has financial problems. I am also speeding up the process to resolve these issues once and for all. The matter is rightly of concern to many businesses right across the country and I will do everything I can to help.

Oral Answers to Questions

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s welcome. I am working closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is responsible for consumer affairs, to ensure that we act as quickly as possible to ban these surcharges and to deliver a better deal to consumers.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

2. What estimate he has made of the proportion of the money issued through quantitative easing which has been used by banks to pay off their debts.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

Quantitative easing is a tool of the independent Monetary Policy Committee and has been designed to work through channels other than the impaired banking system by stimulating activity in capital markets. The Government and the Bank of England are working together on a new funding for lending scheme that will more broadly support sustained and increased bank lending to the economy. I can confirm for the first time that in the three months since the start of the national loan guarantee scheme, over 10,000 cheaper loans worth over £1.5 billion have been offered to businesses. I can also confirm that we have today secured EU state aid approval to extend the scheme to medium-sized businesses with a turnover of up to £250 million. That means 99.9% of UK businesses can now benefit.

[Natascha Engel]

Quantitative easing was certainly intended to stimulate the economy, but in reality it is being used to write off the debts of reckless banks with hundreds of billions of pounds’ worth of virtual money. Has anyone in Government thought through the consequences of this policy, and if so, what are they?

[Mr Osborne]

The Bank of England conducted a study of the first round of QE that it undertook under the last Government, and estimated that it had increased real GDP by between 1.5% and 2%. The Bank’s chief economist says that the asset programme regime

“was explicitly designed to go around the banking system”.

I therefore do not accept the hon. Lady’s characterisation.

Eurozone Crisis

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need fiscal entrenchment across the eurozone to take place in the same way as we are tackling a fiscal deficit here in the United Kingdom. However, we also need measures, in Europe and elsewhere, to promote growth. That is one of the key areas in which the Prime Minister has been influential, shaping a debate in Europe and persuading European leaders to recommit themselves to improving measures to promote growth and bring about the recovery that the eurozone economy needs.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

If UK taxpayer money is being paid to the IMF and the IMF is paying towards the eurozone bail-out, how can the Minister guarantee that no UK taxpayer money is going towards the bailing out of the eurozone?

[Mr Hoban]

The money that nations contribute to the IMF goes into its general resources. I believe that there are currently 53 IMF programmes, only three of which are in the eurozone. We have made clear that if the IMF needs to increase its resources to tackle some of the global issues that face economies at present, we will listen to its requests.

Eurozone Crisis

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

They were all written by him.

The Foreign Secretary described the euro as a

“burning building with no exits”.

That was his point. As I said, the break-up of the euro, disorderly or otherwise, this autumn or in the foreseeable future, would cause enormous instability to the entire global economy and do enormous damage to the British economy.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Will the Chancellor provide some clarification? He said that no UK funding would go to the euro bail-out. When he talked about supporting the IMF, therefore, did he mean with advice and suggestions only or is he using UK taxpayers’ money to support it? If the latter, how will he force the IMF to ring-fence the money so that it does not pay for a euro bail-out?

[Mr Osborne]

Let me be clear to the hon. Lady. The IMF potentially has a role—but that is yet to be decided—in helping the eurozone to organise its special purpose vehicle, provide technical support and do all the things that it is very good at doing, which is stepping in and providing expertise. That is a perfectly legitimate role for the IMF. It has done it in other situations where trust funds and the like have been created around the world. However, we are saying that there should not be IMF resources going into this special purpose vehicle in terms of a lending programme. The IMF lends money to countries with conditions attached, and that is what it should do in the future. It is what its articles require it to do. We do not support, and I do not think that the IMF does either, changing those articles and allowing the IMF to lend money to the special purpose vehicle. We are against that and against Britain contributing to the special purpose vehicle, even if countries such as China or Chinese sovereign wealth funds do contribute.

Summer Adjournment

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered matters to be raised before the forthcoming adjournment.

Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker; I thought that this moment would never arrive. A total of 66 Members want to participate in the debate, including our newest Member—my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie)—who is hoping to make his maiden speech. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] It is unfortunate therefore that two Government statements, important though they both were, have taken almost two hours out of Back Benchers’ time. To set an example of brevity and to prepare us for all the constituency carnivals and fairs at which we will be spending most of our time during the recess, I hereby declare the debate open.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We are now coming to a maiden speech, and I remind hon. Members not to intervene on it.

Business, innovation and skills

Comprehensive Spending Review

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. This statement can run for only a few more minutes, so some people will be disappointed, but I reiterate the appeal for short questions. Help yourself and help others in the process.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

The Chancellor has announced a cut of 490,000 jobs in the public sector. Whichever way he slices it, that still means that even after four years and even if it is down to natural wastage there will be 490,000 jobs in the public sector that are lost to the economy. He also wants to move people off benefit and into work to save on the welfare budget. How does he make this add up? Where are the jobs coming from that the people who are now on welfare—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are grateful, but I think we have the thrust of it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his new position. Has he calculated what his announcement of a £125 million reduction in the police grant means, in terms of fewer police officers and fewer special constables in Derbyshire?

[Mr Osborne]

All public services have to find efficiencies, and that is true of the police service, as it is of every other service. I have to say to the hon. Lady, and all Opposition Members, that if they are going to play a serious part in the discussion about how to reduce Britain’s record budget deficit, they need to come up with their own proposals instead of attacking every proposal put forward by the Government.