Rachel Reeves
Main Page: Rachel Reeves (Labour - Leeds West and Pudsey)Department Debates - View all Rachel Reeves's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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An absolute central part of any settlement we might reach with the banks will be a material and verifiable increase in the amount of lending to British businesses, especially medium and small businesses. [Interruption.] Labour Members mutter, but they secured absolutely nothing for British business when they bailed out the banks. They had the money in their hands to give to the banks, and they secured absolutely nothing in return.
A quick glance at today’s newspaper financial pages shows that the share price of RBS is 40p today compared with 52p this time last year, while that of Lloyds was 66p today compared with 64p a year ago. My constituents in Leeds West would not expect bonuses for such performance, so why should taxpayers’ money be used for the bonuses of our nationalised banks?
The deal that the previous Government signed with RBS as a condition of being part of the asset protection scheme stated that it should not pay bonuses in 2009, but that for the bonuses awarded in 2010—the period we are talking about now—it should pay the market rate. That was the deal that Labour signed up to. I am trying to reduce the RBS bonus pool, and I have made it very clear—as has the Prime Minister—that it should be a back-marker, not a market leader.