Pat McFadden
Main Page: Pat McFadden (Labour - Wolverhampton South East)Department Debates - View all Pat McFadden's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
There were some excellent female candidates but—I will be absolutely candid with my hon. Friend—it was rather disappointing that there were not more female candidates of the highest quality. Both I and my predecessor faced that issue with appointments to the Monetary Policy Committee, and I would like to work constructively with people who have ideas on how we can encourage women in the economics profession to aim for a career in public service, the MPC, or central banking. We must do more to encourage that because, as I said, both I and my predecessor found that we did not have as wide a range of female candidates for the MPC as we would have liked.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
There are good reasons for the Chancellor to appoint the Governor of the Bank of Canada. As he said, Canada weathered the crisis well and was the first G7 country to restore employment and GDP to pre-crisis levels—a stark contrast with our own position. Will the Chancellor discuss the Canadian experience with the new Governor in order to get lending moving? He will know that initiatives such as Merlin have not worked, and unless we get lending flowing to the real economy we will not get the recovery that we all want.
Mr Osborne
Canada had the advantage of going into the crisis with properly managed public finances, and it avoided the large bank bail-outs that we had in this country—RBS was the biggest bank bail-out in the world—because its banks were better regulated. Hopefully, Mr Carney will bring some of that experience.
The right hon. Gentleman makes a serious point about lending in the economy. The Bank of England has created the funding for lending scheme, and we see the impact of that in new products that banks such as Santander and Lloyds have launched. He is right to say that that is one of the things we have to be on in terms of economic management. The de-leveraging in our economy is still one of the real headwinds to recovery.