Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vince Cable and Ian Murray

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not share the consensus among Opposition Members about the benefits of British membership. I am sure that if he occasionally crosses the border into Luton South and visits the vehicle production institution, he will recognise the EU’s importance to the industry and of its having the European Union negotiate access to bigger markets such as north America, as it currently is.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

In a recent article in The Times, a host of senior Cabinet members, including the Foreign Secretary, the Chief Whip, and even some Ministers in the Secretary of State’s own Department, stated that they would campaign for an “out” vote in any EU referendum. In the same article, another Cabinet member was reported as saying:

“It would be a continual distraction from…work on the economy”.

Given that, as the Secretary of State said, the EU is one of our largest trading partners, what is his view on the impact on UK trade and jobs in the event of, first, an EU referendum, and, secondly, exit from the EU?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vince Cable and Ian Murray

Thursday 20th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Yes, it is often forgotten when we talk about manufacturers that the food and drinks sector is the largest by a considerable measure. It is a considerable success and we are supporting it, not just through the work of UKTI, but through our work on agri-tech industries, innovation and the skills strategy.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

The Government promised an export-led recovery, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) mentioned, the trade gap is widening and exports are going backwards. Why, then, have the Government, mid-year, slashed the budget for the trade show access programme that helps small businesses new to exporting or new to markets to gain access to international trade shows? I have had sight of a private letter from the trade association, the Sponsors Alliance, to the Prime Minister asking him to reverse this dreadful decision. Will the Secretary of State support this plea from small businesses and not slash the funding they desperately need to support their exporting activities?

[Vince Cable]

First, there is no question of the budget being slashed; it has been substantially increased, and the question is how much it should have been increased by. I am aware of the concerns of trade associations, however, and have met them and discussed the matter with them, and we are endeavouring to ensure they have the maximum support.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vince Cable and Ian Murray

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The maritime sector is subject to the national minimum wage if it is operating within the UK jurisdiction. I will happily take up the case that the hon. Gentleman mentions and, indeed, I was aware of accusations of abuse in this sector.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

We know that the Government do not want to admit that the country is engulfed by a cost of living crisis, but that denial is made worse when the Chancellor is exposed as giving a hollow and empty promise to raise the national minimum wage to £7 an hour. Indeed, only a few days after he made that promise, the Conservative party issued a memo, under the heading “Common Sense Guide”, advising on how to avoid paying the national minimum wage. Rather than false promises for the lowest paid in our country, would it not be helpful to utilise the Secretary of State’s naming and shaming policy to expose the national minimum wage deniers in his Government and back Labour’s plans for a living wage?

[Vince Cable]

I thought that the Labour party was still committed to supporting the national minimum wage. This is an interesting new evolution of policy, which seems to have been made on the stump. The naming and shaming policy has now come into effect and the first five companies were named at the end of last week.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vince Cable and Ian Murray

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The process will be competitive, as is right, and designed to achieve value for money for the taxpayer. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, it is practice to enclose details of those fees in the prospectus, and he will see that in due course.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I am sure the whole House will wish to join me in congratulating all Royal Mail staff for producing a doubling of profits this year, and we send our best wishes to the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), for a speedy recovery.

The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks, who I am surprised is not answering this question, is seen as a fire fighter in Government, but rather than putting out the fire at Royal Mail, he has lit the fuse and put the fire sale signs up. He is, of course, rushing that through to spare the blushes of his Chancellor, who is borrowing £245 billion more than he said in 2010 and is desperate for pre-election cash in the coffers. The Minister signed a letter in 2009 in which he said he was opposed to privatisation, so why are the Government now rushing a sell-off that is opposed by right-wing think-tanks, the unions, the National Federation of SubPostmasters, small businesses, the Liberal Democrats, and people up and down this country who will receive a poorer postal service as a result?

[Vince Cable]

The Opposition have a strange but perhaps rather revealing idea of speedy decision making. The process of bringing private capital into the Post Office started in 2008 under my Labour predecessor. It was one of our first pieces of legislation—I introduced it in the House, it was agreed, and we are now following through in an orderly way designed to get good value for the taxpayer and a good outcome for Royal Mail.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vince Cable and Ian Murray

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

My hon. Friend’s basic premise is correct. I am sure that he has read the recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which said that Britain has the second most flexible labour market in the OECD, and that is what we want to retain.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate the new Minister for employment law, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). I am disappointed that he is not answering this question, but let me put it on record that he has been courteous and constructive in his role so far, and I wish him at least a modicum of success. [Interruption.] That is as far as my generosity goes, I am afraid.

With no plan for growth and consumer confidence at its lowest in decades, the Government are trying to make it easier to fire, rather than hire, people. There is an ongoing pitched battle between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Downing street, with the Secretary of State being dragged kicking and screaming to a no-fault dismissal consultation on which, indeed, a written statement was issued only 10 minutes ago. The new Minister said in October:

“I think it would be madness to throw away all employment protection in the way that’s proposed, and it could be very damaging to consumer confidence”,

and suggested that it was crazy. Does the Secretary of State agree with his new Minister?

[Vince Cable]

The interesting thing about this controversy is that we are being attacked with such vehemence from the left and the right, which suggests that we are just about in the right place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vince Cable and Ian Murray

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

You can waste me first, Mr Speaker.

The Secretary of State will be aware of the performance targets set down in the Project Merlin agreement. One of the agreed measures to determine the bonuses of bank chief executives was to examine whether banks were providing the promised credit to businesses and, in particular, to small and medium-sized enterprises. The agreement also clearly stated that there would be no rewards for failure. Why, then, did the Government wave through the bonus for the Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive before the Bank of England had published the annual Project Merlin lending figures?

[Vince Cable]

The chief executive was on a contract, which I think was negotiated when Labour was in government. It had five separate metrics, of which that was one. It is certainly true that, according to the provisional data, RBS has not quite met its gross lending targets, but the Merlin agreement has not yet run its course, and we shall await its findings with interest.

Amendment of the Law

Debate between Vince Cable and Ian Murray

Thursday 24th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I really do not know what the right hon. Gentleman is talking about. We started by talking about excessive bonuses in one very large investment bank, and he has now extended that to the whole of the financial services sector. Of course that sector is valuable. Of course the jobs and the tax revenue are valuable, but that is not what he was talking about in his ideological dispute with his deputy leader.

Let me return to the right hon. Gentleman’s central message that the Government should abandon, or substantially modify, their fiscal strategy. I shared a platform last week at the London School of Economics with Angel Gurría of the OECD. He was asked what the Government should do. He had a simple message, which was that we should “stick with it”. He is not some pro-coalition politician or right-wing ideologue; he is the head of an organisation representing 25 Governments. Opposition Members should ask themselves—the shadow Chancellor was asked this but he neatly evaded the question—why all the major international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the G20, support the strategy that we have adopted. The reason is that they are all painfully aware that we are in an economically dangerous world in which crises of sovereign debt are not very far away.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

The Business Secretary is going through a list of international organisations that evidently support his plan. However, as a result of the plan, the UK will have the smallest public sector in the G7 by 2015—smaller even than that of America. Does not that tell the right hon. Gentleman, who was on our side of the argument before the election, that this is an ideological attack on public services in this country?

[Vince Cable]

I cannot see how it can be ideological to have a public sector that, by the end of this Parliament, will have a share of GDP comparable to what it was when the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) became Prime Minister. Whatever criticisms the Opposition might want to make, ideology has absolutely nothing to do with this.

The comments of the international organisations are reflected in those of the business community. The former head of the CBI has often been quoted on this, because he was critical of the Government. He had some strong criticisms, which we have taken to heart. However, it is worth remembering how he started the speech that is now so frequently quoted. He said:

“This coalition Government has been single-minded—some might even say ruthless—in its approach to spending cuts…That policy is strongly supported by business, on the grounds that sound public finances are an essential foundation for a sound economy.”

I want to deal more specifically with the suggestion that we are cutting too much too soon. The shadow Chancellor has quoted me on this, and he is quite right. I said on “Newsnight”, and I will continue to say, that there is a serious economic debate that we must constantly have on striking the right balance between not choking off recovery and not risking a financial crisis. That is the calculation that we are having to make. Our approach has been vindicated by the evidence, and the evidence is the response of the financial markets. The bond yields, which are important not just as an indicator but because they set the cost of capital for business and investment, are 3.5% for 10-year bonds, which is close to the rates in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, compared with 5.2% in Spain, 7.5% in Portugal, 9% in Ireland and 12% in Greece. That is a fair comparison with what they were a year ago when the Labour party was in power. Since then, the differential has widened by 1.5% in respect of Spain, 3.5% for Portugal and 5% for Greece and Ireland. In real terms, the cost of capital—long-term capital in this country—is now zero. The reason why that matters was summarised many years ago by John Maynard Keynes. Labour Members may revere his memory, as do some of us. During the crisis of the 1930s, Keynes wrote to Roosevelt:

“The turn of the tide in Great Britain is largely attributable to the reduction in the long-term rate of interest.”

That is the basis on which we have to take account of interest rates.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

That is right, and I am sure that if we reflected a little we could add further to the list.

Let me talk about employment.

[Ian Murray]

rose—

[Vince Cable]

Let me press on a little first, and then I will take an intervention.

In future, growth and jobs will come from the private sector, and in particular from small-scale business. Taken in conjunction with the trade White Paper to which I have referred, the Budget’s commitment to lower and stable corporation tax gives the strong signal that we are open for business and we warmly welcome inward investors. Growth and jobs also depend on small companies, which provided a giant proportion of the 300,000 additional jobs created in the private sector in the past six months, and they will be helped by the Budget’s extension of small company business rate relief and cuts in small company corporation tax.

Tuition Fees

Debate between Vince Cable and Ian Murray

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

No, I will not give way again. I have dealt with the issue.

The issue of the Browne commission was raised, and I have made the point that I asked the commission to produce a policy that was significantly more progressive than the one that we had, and Lord Browne has done so. We have not accepted the commission’s report in its entirety, however; we have made significant changes to make it a better policy.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Vince Cable]

Will the hon. Gentleman sit down and let me finish the point?

The Browne report—a report commissioned by the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen and his colleagues—recommended no limit on caps. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman remembers that. No limit was proposed, but we have proposed to limit the cap to a manageable and reasonable level that reflects the costs of universities. The report also suggested that—