PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

671 Debate on the Address
15 MAY 2013
Debate on the Address
672
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab): Can the
Chancellor name a single occasion before the banking
problems in 2008 when he and his party argued for
tighter regulation of the City?
Mr Osborne: My party voted against the tripartite
arrangement. I do not have the quote with me today—I
will send it to the right hon. Gentleman or ensure that
my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has it for the
wind-up—but the shadow Chancellor at the time, my
right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden
(Mr Lilley), warned in this House that taking prudential
regulation away from the Bank of England was a massive
mistake and that the Bank of England would not be
able to spot the growth of debt bubbles in the economy.
Tragically, that is precisely what happened a decade
later, and in part the responsibility lies with the people
who set up the regulatory system. Is it not extraordinary
that Labour Members get up and say that the Conservatives
said this or that, yet we are looking at the City Minister
at the time? We are looking at the person who, before
that, was the chief economic adviser who devised the
system and who used to take pleasure in telling everyone
that he turned up in Government and gave Eddie George
a letter saying that he was no longer in charge of
banking regulation—that used to be the shadow
Chancellor’s story, but he never talks about it now.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
(LD): I think the country understands that we could
not go on as we did, with a completely unregulated City,
with bonuses out of control and with unjustifiable
profits. The Government’s policy on taxation is fairer
now than it ever was under the previous Government.
May I ask the Chancellor, however, to address the
matter of the housing market, to which he partly referred?
In addition to the welcome measures in the Queen’s
Speech, will he look into how we can increase the
supply of social rented housing and deal with the fact
that many non-domiciled people are buying property in
this country, not to live in or to rent out, but to keep
empty, forcing up prices for everyone, beyond what
people can afford?
Mr Osborne: We are putting in place, right now, new
guarantees—the first time that the Treasury has done
this—for social housing associations to enable them to
build more social homes; in the Budget, we also confirmed
support for an additional 30,000 social homes, so we are
taking action to help on that front. With our Help to
Buy scheme we are also helping those who want to buy
their own home in the private market. My right hon.
Friend is absolutely right that we should do both, which
is precisely what we are doing.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op): As
we learned with great interest, there was much in the
Queen’s Speech that will affect employment, skills and
manufacturing in our country. This is an important part
of our country’s future. Can the Chancellor assure me
that there is a unit in the Treasury—or a plan for the
Treasury—to carry out an independent evaluation of
how skills, jobs and manufacturing would be affected if
this country left the European Union?
Mr Osborne: I will come on to talk briefly about
reform in the European Union, but I am clear that an
unreformed European Union is also doing damage to
British competitiveness and British jobs.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con): The estimated
cost of the Labour party’s plans is £28 billion. Labour
opposes every one of our spending cuts, so does that
not imply that it would fund the whole lot by pushing
this country’s borrowing back towards £150 billion? Is
that why the shadow Chancellor is so reluctant to say
what more borrowing he could commit to?
Mr Osborne: My hon. Friend is right to say that that
is the approach of the shadow Chancellor. The right
hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), who is sadly not in
his place, gave the shadow Chancellor some unsolicited
advice last week—I think it was unsolicited. He said:
“Labour’s Treasury team need to get out on the stump now
and work even harder. It shouldn’t just be left to Ed and Harriet”—
Miliband and Harman—
“to carry the heavy load”
on shows such as the “World at One”. We could not
agree more, because it is fair to say that when the
Labour leader appears on the radio—I am not sure how
to put this delicately—there is a little confusion about
what Labour’s economic policy might be. Ten times he
was asked whether borrowing would go up or what his
party’s policy was, and he did not reveal it. I will be fair
to the shadow Chancellor and say that he is much more
straightforward. He has a much clearer message than
his leader: “Vote Labour and borrowing will go up. Vote
Labour and welfare bills will rise.” Vote Labour and he
will do it all again. It is not just the right hon. Member
for Neath who wants to see the shadow Chancellor on
the media more—we want to see him on the media
much more.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab): Yesterday,
I met the chairman of Fujitsu, which has just put
£800 million into the British economy. He told me that
his company had done so only because this country is in
the European Union. He was, however, rather disappointed
not to have had a reply from the Prime Minister after
writing to him with that news. Does the Chancellor of
the Exchequer not understand that his Government
should be more interested in providing stability for
business than in pleasing their own Back Benchers?
Mr Osborne: It is very good news that Fujitsu is
choosing to employ in the United Kingdom. I do not
see the hon. Lady’s intervention as a hostile one that has
put me on the back foot; what am I supposed to do
about the fact that international companies are choosing
the United Kingdom as the place to invest and create
jobs? That is a tough one!
I have to admit that the hon. Lady has a point, but let
me come on to say something about the change that is
required, including the change in the European Union,
which of course is a subject of debate today.
It is true that for much of my political life and, I
suspect, the political life of many in the House, the
concerns about Europe have primarily been ones of
sovereignty and constitutional power—not exclusively,
but those have been the most dominant. Those concerns
have not disappeared, but they have been complemented
by economic concerns, and those economic concerns
have grown. There is concern that the European prescription
of high taxes, expensive social costs and unaffordable
welfare is slowly strangling the European economy.
There are concerns from business that directive after