Bank of England

Stephen Williams Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

There should not be any conflicts of interest, because he is very clearly the Governor of the central Bank of Canada, will remain so until the end of May, and will fight Canada’s corner as we would expect him to do. However, he is also the chair of the Financial Stability Board, of which we are a member. He is already heavily involved in international financial regulation and in decisions that have a real impact on our financial services. Moreover, Canada is a G7 country, and is probably one of our closest allies: it is difficult to think of a closer ally than Canada. We already work incredibly closely with the Canadians. Incidentally, the fact that we co-ordinated the press conference in Ottawa and the statement in the House of Commons today and the news did not leak in advance shows that the two Governments work together and trust each other.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

On behalf of the Liberal Democrats in the coalition, I welcome Mr Carney to his post. Although he will not take up his position until next summer, no doubt his views will be keenly studied in expectation of his doing so. Does the Chancellor agree that one thing that all our constituents will want to hear from him is a clear indication that he will expect the very highest professional standards in the banking industry, so that bankers can be seen to be working in favour of taxpayers and consumers and not just with self-regard?

[Mr Osborne]

Mr Carney has been pretty tough in Canada, and Canada has a much better record than this country of avoiding bail-outs and keeping Canadian banks safe. As chair of the Financial Stability Board, he has been very keen to secure international agreement on new, tougher rules on pay, risk-taking and the like in order to ensure that individual financial centres do not try to out-compete each other for less and less regulation. I should also make clear that he supports the John Vickers reforms that will be introduced in the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill, including the ring-fencing of retail banking, which is the really major reform of banking that the coalition Government are bringing about.