Royal Bank of Scotland

Debate between Richard Burgon and Jeremy Quin

Thursday 5th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) on securing this debate, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving Members time to discuss this important and topical issue in the Chamber. I am pleased that so many have taken part. It is a real pleasure to join the Minister and to respond on behalf of the Opposition for the first time in the Chamber.

We have discussed a proposal that asks the Government to consider suspending the further sale of their shares in RBS while a review is conducted of the UK’s financial sector and the case for new banking models. It is a simple motion and all Opposition Members support it.

This discussion of the causes and consequences of RBS’s bail-outs and of the Chancellor’s ongoing plans to sell off RBS, with a resulting cost to the taxpayer, has also been an excellent opportunity to discuss the future of RBS and of British banking as a whole, including the new models and structures that may benefit the British economy. The Government must engage in this debate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) so effectively set out in his speech.

Labour Members want a thriving and dynamic banking sector that will best deliver for the economy and the electorate as a whole. In government, Labour decided to bail out RBS. That was a big decision—a £45 billion decision—but it was the right one given the calamitous situation in RBS, which my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) outlined so effectively. According to the National Audit Office, the decision was justified, and the price was backed by Institute for Fiscal Studies, but the scale of the bail-out—the money invested on behalf of the taxpayer—means that we cannot so lightly take a simple decision to return to business as usual.

The Chancellor argued in his Mansion House speech earlier this year that

“the easiest path for the politician is to put off the decision”.

I believe that the Chancellor has taken the easy decision to return, as I have said, to business as usual. The former shadow Chancellor my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) said at the time that

“taxpayers who bailed out the bank will want their money back… The Chancellor needs to justify his haste in selling off a chunk of RBS”.

Both those points still stand: taxpayers still want their money back, and the Chancellor must still justify his haste.

Let us be clear that we cannot afford to get this sale wrong. The evidence of the Move Your Money poll, which was presented to us in the media this morning and by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton, shows that the public think the Government are getting it wrong: 82% of those polled agree, given their own interest as the majority shareholder in RBS, that this should operate in the public interest, and 58% believe that the bank should be restructured to serve local economies throughout the UK.

[Jeremy Quin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Burgon]

No, because I want to give the Minister as much time as possible to respond.

It is incumbent on the Minister and the Chancellor to set out why they are moving ahead with the sale. What evidence does the Minister have that it is the right thing to do? This is the first opportunity for a full parliamentary debate on the decision of the Chancellor to privatise RBS since his announcement to the City at the Mansion House in June. He did make a statement the following day, but informing the House was clearly something of an afterthought, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) clearly spelled out. At the Mansion House, the Chancellor announced a share sale even if it meant a financial loss to the taxpayer. The 5% stake sold on 3 August has already realised a loss of £1 billion, and some calculations suggest that the total losses if the entire stake is sold in this way could be about £13 billion, which is almost a third of the £45.5 billion total cost of the bail-out.

The Government have provided no real evidence of why RBS should be returned to the private sector in its previous form or why it should happen now. A 13-page report by the Rothschild Group and a two-page letter from the Governor of the Bank of England have been mentioned. The authors of the Rothschild report stressed that they had

“not sought to address the question of whether the government should sell its stake in RBS, but rather when it should do so.”

In other words, the review did not consider the full range of policy options. Will the Minister elaborate on how moving RBS shares from public to private ownership will promote financial stability, and on whether the relevant Bank of England Committee has endorsed that view? Will she publish any evidence she has received in support of that view?

It is welcome that the right hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), the Chair of the Treasury Committee, has asked to see the advice provided by UKFI to ensure that the taxpayer, as shareholder, is getting good value from this Government-owned company. I support that call. Is the timing of this sale in the interests of taxpayers or bank customers, or does the Chancellor just want to sell off another state asset quickly to make his borrowing figures look better? Was this decision taken purely for ideological reasons, or is it based on expert, independent advice? Will the Minister explain how the Chancellor arrived at his decision? In line with the call by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), will the Minister share the evidence, if she has any, with Members of the House?

I will turn to alternative models and structures for RBS and the future of British banking. I ask the Government to consider undertaking a full review of UK banking that questions how financial institutions have operated before and since the crash, and what other models might be considered to diversify the sector and deliver for the country by strengthening the economy.

There has been a much needed discussion of banking practices and reform over the past five years. We have had Lawrence Tomlinson’s report, Sir Andrew Large’s report on RBS’s independent lending, Sir John Vickers’ Independent Commission on Banking, and the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and the work of the Treasury Committee, both under the excellent leadership of the right hon. Member for Chichester, to name but a few.

Given how badly things went wrong and the problems that still exist at the bank, the question we must discuss today is how we can do it better. We need to know not only why RBS failed, but whether it is delivering for the British economy now, and, if it is not, how we can do it better.

Labour was right to bail out RBS, but how has it operated since the Government became the majority shareholder? RBS has been bailed out, but there are still major problems with its operation, as the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) indicated in his speech. It has cut more than 30,000 staff since 2008, many of whom were backroom staff on about £20,000 per year. It is closing branches faster than any other bank, and 90 of those it has closed this year were the last branch in town.

The Tomlinson report said in 2011:

“Returning RBS and Lloyds to full private sector ownership in their current form would be a return to the banking landscape of 2003, possibly with even less competition… Given the lack of any real change in the banking sector, there is nothing that will stop 2018 being the same as 2008 unless radical action is taken now.”

The Andrew Large report found that RBS was failing SMEs. He said:

“A perception has risen among some SMEs that RBS is unwilling to lend.”

I want to take this opportunity to touch on how RBS has been treating businesses. The House will recall the Backbench Business debate on 4 December last year on the Financial Conduct Authority redress scheme, in which hon. Members raised the serious concerns of businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) stated:

“The only thing that is consistent and transparent is that the banks that caused the financial crash are profiting from selling products such as interest rate hedging products, which were bought by a company in my constituency, the Flanagan Group, and have caused it great difficulty.”

Similarly, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) talked about one of his local businesses, DK Motorcycles, which had been “badly let down” by RBS, but had

“finally escaped the clutches of RBS”.

He talked about

“people from small businesses who feel bullied by their banks”.—[Official Report, 4 December 2014; Vol. 589, c. 480-84.]

Information that I have seen this week shows that the serious concerns of businesses such as Flanagan’s have not gone away. I therefore want to take this opportunity to ask the Minister whether she will meet me, concerned MPs like my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton and businesses such as the Flanagan Group in his constituency to discuss the behaviour of RBS and what can be done to resolve the situation.

That leads me to the question that was put so well by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) of whether selling RBS in its current form represents good long-term value for the taxpayer, taking into account all the economic costs and benefits. Is the Minister aware of those who say that the low price of RBS shares represents a belief among market participants that the reforms to guarantee its future financial health have not yet been concluded? Is the Minister satisfied that all necessary steps have been taken to return RBS to a state where it will not be in trouble again? Finally, is the economy best served solely by private shareholder banking, or is there a case for a more diversified sector that includes publicly owned and directed institutions, mutuals, co-operatives, social enterprises and regionalised banking? With so many fundamental questions yet to be answered, it is right that we engage in a wider review of the UK’s financial sector that considers the case for establishing new models of banking that might better serve our economy.

In conclusion, there are many alternatives. It has been proposed from a number of quarters that RBS be broken up to deliver regional banks, including by the Tomlinson report, the New Economics Foundation, Civitas and ResPublica, as Opposition Members have mentioned. We must discuss how regional banks can help to rebalance the economy—perhaps the Chancellor took the opportunity while visiting Germany to look into that.

It is our responsibility to map out the best way forward for UK banking, so that it delivers for the electorate and the economy as a whole. That means suspending sales of shares in RBS, which give away taxpayers’ money to private shareholders. It is incumbent on the Chancellor to explain why he thinks that is the right thing to do, and that means engaging with a real review of the banking sector and alternative models that will deliver a diversified and more resilient economy. How we treat RBS now will demonstrate whether we have learned the lessons of the crisis—