Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Stephen Pound

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), who gave a comprehensive account of why we should support the very precise amendment on the bank levy.

A banker writing in the 1920s wrote:

“April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire”,

and went on to talk about the present month as “depraved May”. I quote T. S. Eliot—

[Stephen Pound]

He was a bank clerk, not a banker.

[Nic Dakin]

I quote T. S. Eliot to remind us that bankers have played good parts in the world of culture, finance and many other things, and to remind us through his words of the pain of growth and rebirth. Economic growth is a difficult business. That is the business that we should be in, and we should make sure that bankers play their part in that.

Bankers were not always about bonuses, and conversations about banks were not always about bonuses. Sadly, since the credit crunch and the global financial crisis, more attention has been focused on how great the anomaly is. We have heard the telephone-number salaries quoted and compared with the situation of people in our constituencies who are doing their best to bring their families up to be aspirational and to move forward in their lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nic Dakin]

I thank my hon. Friend for that observation. Project Merlin’s record is a sorry tale so far. We see a failure to deliver on bankers’ bonuses and a failure to reinvest the taxation from them in the economy. He is right that the record on lending to small and medium-sized enterprises is woeful. Small and medium-sized enterprises, as I think all Members recognise, are the lifeblood and the engine of our economy, and he is completely right to underline that point.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend refers to taxation arising from bankers’ bonuses flowing back into the economy. Would that that were so. Does he not agree that the ingenuity, skill and—I dare say—avarice of the average banker is best demonstrated by their ability to defer tax liability, so that the money, rather than coming back, tends to fructify in their pockets?

[Nic Dakin]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Clearly, the amendment aims to provoke a review of how we best ensure that bankers’ bonuses are taxed efficiently and effectively, rather than ineffectively, as the Government are currently, which is always a danger unless we are vigilant, as my hon. Friend suggests.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Stephen Pound

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound]

You are absolutely correct, as in all things, Miss Begg.

[Nic Dakin]

I am following my hon. Friend’s argument very carefully, as all hon. Members will be. Is it not true that all the evidence is that in their fifth year Parliaments run out of steam and get tired, and the country is impatient for democratic renewal, and is not that why we should have four-year Parliaments or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) argued, three-year Parliaments?

[Stephen Pound]

One reason why I support clause 1, page 1, line 13, is not because I am massively enamoured of the joys of four-year Parliaments as opposed to five-year Parliaments, nor because I think that there is a natural rhythm in the political cycle that means that every few years we get exhausted and have to have an election, but because it is the least-worst option. It is unfortunately a fact that sometimes we have to present that option. I happily present the hon. Gentleman from the constituency that one day I will be able to pronounce.