IMF

Peter Bone Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right to draw attention to the fact that, although we have been talking a lot about the eurozone, the IMF does a great deal of important work in low-income countries. As I said, there are 53 programmes, of which only three—albeit they are very large ones—are in the eurozone. At the IMF I specifically intervened to ask that the IMF’s windfall profits from recent gold sales be used to reduce the interest costs for low-income countries that undertake IMF programmes, to make sure that they have access to the increase in resources we are talking about today.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The only way for Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece to become competitive and get their economies growing again is through a return to national currencies. Does not the Chancellor agree that it is a bonkers policy to pour billions and billions of UK taxpayers’ money into supporting the failed euro?

[Mr Osborne]

We are not pouring money into some eurozone bail-out fund. We are providing a loan to the International Monetary Fund. I hear what my hon. Friend says about the decision, but every single previous Government have been part of increases in IMF resources—in 1983 and in 1990, under Lady Thatcher’s Government, we contributed to increases in IMF resources. He says that these countries are lost causes, but in Portugal, where very difficult decisions have been taken, exports are up by 7% and the current account deficit has been reduced; Ireland has gone into a current account surplus and Spanish exports are up. Of course they are having to make the adjustments in a brutal way, by real cuts in wages rather than a currency devaluation, but that is the consequence of being in a single currency. The Governments in those countries, with, in most cases, the support of the public now, are taking those difficult decisions. It is interesting that even in Greece, which is probably the most traumatically affected of those countries, there is a clear and overwhelming public majority for Greece staying in the euro.