Banking

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The statistics speak for themselves. Of course, the shadow Chancellor used to be the chief economic adviser and, given that almost everything at the Treasury was signed off by him, he presumably signed off the knighthood for Sir Fred Goodwin. Perhaps in one of our future encounters we will hear the truth about that.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

Some £125 billion was put into the banks by the last Labour Government to bail them out in the crisis. Will the Chancellor tell us when the taxpayer will get that money back?

[Mr Osborne]

Unfortunately, if we sold those shares today, we would lose money as a country. Of course we want to return those banks to the private sector. That is clearly an objective of this Government, and I suspect that it will be an important issue in this Chamber during this Parliament. The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point: a huge sum of money was put in to bail out the banks and no conditions were attached. With all the things that I have talked about today and all the things that the shadow Chancellor asked about, such as pay and transparency, when the previous Government had the leverage, they did not use it. Unfortunately, we have to deal with that inheritance.