Rachel Reeves
Main Page: Rachel Reeves (Labour - Leeds West)Department Debates - View all Rachel Reeves's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Urgent 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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Mr Osborne
To be fair to the FSA, it has been rather candid about the mistakes that were made when the shadow Chancellor was the Chancellor and when the former Prime Minister was the Chancellor. We have to learn from those mistakes. As I have told the House, we will set out the details of the institutional arrangements in a parliamentary statement tomorrow.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
The Chancellor talks about breaking up the retail and investment banks, but the immediate challenge for the Government is the future of the nationalised banks. Will he consider turning the failed banks into mutuals that focus on long-term returns and not on short-term profits?
Mr Osborne
We need to take some time before coming to decisions on how to dispose of the bank shares that we own in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, and the banks we own, such as Northern Rock, not least because at the moment the British taxpayer would make a substantial loss on many of those share purchases. However, we are prepared to consider lots of options. Sir John Vickers’ commission is going to look at competition in the banking industry. It has become incredibly consolidated in the past couple of years and that is not necessarily the best thing for bank customers, as many of us will know from representing businesses that cannot get access to credit. It is sensible to look at what Sir John Vickers and his commission have to say about this.