Autumn Statement
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
As my hon. Friend knows—this is the problem of previous Governments having handed over various powers and rights of this country to Brussels—we are constrained by the VAT threshold that we can levy in this country. I think that it is already the highest in Europe, so we are restricted in what we can do. That is why we are seeking to help small businesses in her west country constituency both through the measures on business rates, and through investment in infrastructure, such as the A303, the Dawlish rail line and the Kingskerswell bypass. As I saw a few weeks ago, the bypass is proceeding very well in her constituency.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Instead of wasting his time in Northamptonshire with a dead-beat candidate, may I suggest that the Chancellor comes to the Rhondda, particularly to visit the Conservative club in Tylorstown? I say the Conservative club, but it has closed and, ironically enough, is now a food bank. If he came to that food bank, he would learn from those who run it that the vast majority of people that they are helping with 2.5 tonnes of food every year are in work. That is because of the sanctions regime, low hours, zero-hours contracts and, most importantly, the bedroom tax. Why does he not deal with any of those facts?
Charter for Budget Responsibility
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Osborne
It is absolutely fair. That is what the cap is about—building a welfare system that is fair to those who need it and fair to those who pay for it.
Mr Osborne
I will take an intervention from the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).
Chris Bryant
Will the Chancellor confirm that, since his initial spending review, he has had to spend £13 billion more on welfare than he predicted? He has had to put it up by £1 billion this year and another £1 billion next year, so if the cap he envisages had been in place during this Parliament, he would have had to come to the House and apologise on four occasions?
Mr Osborne
For a start, welfare spending is £3.7 billion lower than I set out in my first Budget. It is also £10 billion less than the Labour party proposed. Labour Members cannot have it both ways. They keep claiming that we are cutting the welfare system and then complain that the cost is too high. That is one thing that we will explore in the debate—what exactly is the Labour policy.
LIBOR (FSA Investigation)
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
Under the current regime, it is up to the FSA to consider whether there is loss, and it is up to individuals who feel that there has been loss to bring their case forward. As I say, the Government have not been able to come up with a round figure for the total impact on the financial services industry and the economy of what went on, and nor has the FSA. If individuals feel that they have been affected, there are channels available to them.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Is not the truth of the matter that all the political parties were so nervous about financial services business going abroad, because it is so international a business, that we were effectively in thrall to them? Would it not make perfect sense for Mr Diamond, when he appears before the Select Committee, to give evidence on oath?
Mr Osborne
It is entirely up to the Treasury Committee to decide how it wishes to conduct its business.
This Government are introducing far-reaching changes to our regulatory system and the structure of our banking system. It is far from clear that that receives the support of the shadow Chancellor. He has gone out of his way to point out what he thinks are the flaws in the Financial Services Bill, and he has gone out of his way at the Dispatch Box to defend the tripartite system that he designed. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) talks about all-party consensus; let us have all-party consensus on clearing up the mess that the previous Government presided over.
Jobs and Growth
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
I agree with Tony Blair on that and, indeed, on his views on the shadow Chancellor.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
One of the difficulties is that some of the cuts that the Government have made are counter-productive in terms of trying to deliver economic growth. The Chancellor referred to this country’s relationship with India. I think that everybody in this House agrees that we need to do more business with Brazil, India, Russia and China. However, if their businessmen find it impossible to get a visa to get into this country or they encounter massive queues when they arrive at Heathrow because of the enormous cuts to the UK Border Force, they are not going to want to do business with this country. Stop cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Mr Osborne
There have been queues at Heathrow for far too many years, and of course those queues need to be addressed—[Interruption.] There have been queues for years. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need a visa regime that offers support to enterprising individuals—entrepreneurs, people who can bring real skills and value to this country—to come here, and that is precisely what the visa changes we have made will allow. But I have to say that we can have a visa regime that allows in the brightest and the best only if we can command public confidence that we are in control of our borders and that we have a cap on immigration numbers. Remarkably, not only has the Labour party set itself against a cap on benefits, which it will come to regret, but it has opposed the cap on immigration, and that is a huge mistake.
Let me discuss the progress we are making. As the Governor of the Bank of England reminded us, we inherited the largest budget deficit in peacetime but two years into this Government, we have cut the deficit by more than a quarter. In 2010, the state consumed 48% of national income in this country. Today, it consumes 43%. We took office when Britain’s market interest rates were the same as Spain’s. Two years later, our market rates are the lowest in our history and Spain’s are more than 6%. That is the practical benefit our fiscal credibility has brought.
When we came to office, manufacturing had been withering for years, but after two years this country is exporting more cars than it imports for the first time since 1976—the last time a Labour Government bankrupted this country and went begging to the IMF. Today—as Government Members have mentioned, but, strikingly, Opposition Members have not—we hear that when faced with the choice of which plant to invest in General Motors has chosen Ellesmere Port, in the county that I represent, Cheshire, as the site of their future. That is a successful industrial strategy at work, with Ministers, management, employees and employers working together to secure investment.
The chairman of Vauxhall has just said that the Government have put a strategy in place to attract inward investment and support manufacturing, which all helps to make the UK a great place to build cars.
IMF
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(12 years ago)
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Mr Osborne
To be fair, probably most Labour MPs, in their quieter moments, support the IMF and think it is perfectly sensible that, when other countries add their resources, Britain should do so. The most remarkable thing is that the shadow Chancellor led the Labour party into voting against the implementation of the London G20 deal. Because of the change of Government, we introduced the statutory instrument that gave effect to the London G20 deal, yet the shadow Chancellor led the Opposition against it.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Notwithstanding the mandate the Chancellor already has, would not our voters expect a separate vote on this loan in this House, so that all Members can take a view? The Leader of the House, who is sitting next to the Chancellor, is shaking his head; he knows perfectly well that he is going to prorogue Parliament a full week early. Members have plenty of time to stay here and vote on the matter. Is it not more important that we vote?
Mr Osborne
There have been two votes in this Parliament, in the past 18 months, on precisely the question of how much headroom the House of Commons gives the Chancellor of the day to make loans to the IMF. There have already been two votes.
Financial Services Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
Well, the report names Tony Blair, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and the shadow Chancellor. One of the interesting things is that the shadow Chancellor was, of course, instrumental, as I understand it, in creating the tripartite committee. We will hear in his response a detailed defence of the decisions he took.
Eurozone Crisis
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend and I have discussed this matter before, and we disagree. What the Foreign Secretary said at the time—I remember because I was his speechwriter—[Interruption.] And there were some very good speeches at the time.
Mr Osborne
They were all written by him.
The Foreign Secretary described the euro as a
“burning building with no exits”.
That was his point. As I said, the break-up of the euro, disorderly or otherwise, this autumn or in the foreseeable future, would cause enormous instability to the entire global economy and do enormous damage to the British economy.
Mr Osborne
I do not think that the orderly break-up of the euro, even if it were desirable, which I am not saying it would be, could be done in a way that would not lead to a pretty disorderly impact on financial markets and the British economy.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is a very naughty boy and I shall see him afterwards.
Basically, Greece lied about its finances and Italy is probably still lying about its finances. It would have helped enormously had there been independent proper auditing of those countries’ finances. Many people opposed that when it was proposed, but surely we should be advocating it now. The danger for the Government is that it might apply to all 27 countries, not just the 17 eurozone members.
Mr Osborne
Indeed. The statement talked about independent auditing of finance and independent growth figures on which to base fiscal projections, which is precisely what we have introduced in this country through the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility. That will ensure that we do not get political pressure to alter the growth forecast of the type that the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), detailed in his recent autobiography.
Mr Osborne
I will have to thumb through the index of Peter Oborne’s book, “Guilty Men”, to see whether there is a reference to the hon. Gentleman. I will concede that there are a few references to some of my colleagues in that book, but I have a good alibi, which is that I was writing speeches for the Foreign Secretary at the time, making it clear what some of the problems were with the euro, and some of those problems have come to pass.
Mr Osborne
As the Foreign Secretary used to say at the time, he wrote his own speeches, and I write my speeches today—and those who have written my speeches before me have got themselves into the House of Commons, which is a good thing.
The serious point that I would make to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) is this. I completely reject his idea that Britain has been marginalised. We have actually insisted that such matters be discussed at the European Council and ECOFIN. A key component of today’s agreement is the banking package, which is the area where there is most detail. There was a 10-hour negotiation to achieve the banking package last Saturday which Britain was right at the heart of, so we are at the centre of things. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me that his party’s Front-Bench policy to marginalise us from the IMF would also see us leaving that key negotiating table.
The Economy
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
We are engaged in those negotiations, which the Chief Secretary and the Minister for the Cabinet Office are leading for our side. I have asked a very simple question: does the Labour party back public sector pension reform as set out by John Hutton? [Interruption.] That says it all.
Mr Osborne
Will he answer my question? No? I am not taking an intervention. [Interruption.] The question we have here was put by John Hutton himself—
Mr Osborne
I think that the hon. Lady is the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the former Prime Minister, and given that he will never be here to speak for himself, she must speak for him.
Mr Osborne
Let me conclude now.
The scales have fallen from the eyes of Labour MPs. They realise that they have a shadow Chancellor who has to spend the next four years defending his record, and they are completely silent as they realise that they are going to be talking about the past, not the future.
Mr Osborne
I am not giving way. Let me conclude my speech.
That is because the shadow Chancellor is a man—
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
T4. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to take a particular delight in playing the role of Baron Hardup. May I say to him, in the nicest, most Christmassy way possible, that all his austerity talk provokes real anxiety in many of my constituents, who worry about their winter fuel allowance, the VAT increases in January and the major losses in construction jobs in the new year? May I encourage him to play, just sometimes, Prince Charming instead?
Mr Osborne
At least I am not the pantomime dame. The measures we are taking are dealing with the economic inheritance that the previous Government, of whom the hon. Gentleman was a Minister, left this country. As we go into the new year, we are one of the few European economies not facing concerns about their sovereign debt issues, and we are providing a platform for economic growth next year. That is why people are looking at the UK and saying, “There is a country that is dealing with the problems.”
Economic Affairs and Work and Pensions
Debate between Chris Bryant and George Osborne(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
I will make a little progress.
The Queen’s Speech contains five Treasury-sponsored Bills, and I should say something about each of them. There is the national insurance contributions Bill to stop the jobs tax that Labour would have imposed. Like every post-war Labour Government, the previous Government left office with unemployment rising, and their answer was to increase the cost of employing low-paid people. I have not yet heard from the shadow Chancellor, or anyone else, whether that is still the official Opposition’s policy. Our reforms to national insurance will not just stop the most damaging part of the jobs tax but will, by raising employer thresholds, reduce the cost of employing people on lower incomes. The Budget will also contain further measures to stimulate private sector employment and to proclaim to the world that Britain is open for business.
There is the financial services regulation Bill to fix the previous Government’s system of banking regulation. To respond to the question asked by the shadow Chancellor, next week I will set out in more detail the content of that Bill and how we propose to take the matter forward. I find it somewhat baffling to be told by him that he is unsure who is in charge of banking regulation at the moment. That was the question posed by the Treasury Committee in the last Parliament—a question about the system of regulation that his predecessor as Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, created in 1997. That system meant that no one was in charge of looking at the growing levels of debt and the systemic risks building up in our banking system.
I believe that it is still the Opposition’s policy to oppose our decision to introduce a bank levy; they claim that they want every country in the world to have agreed to such a levy before Britain goes ahead with it. Our decision is to proceed with it, because the banks should pay some contribution to clearing up the mess that they helped to create.
We are working urgently on a problem that the shadow Chancellor correctly raised, but to which, of course, he found little solution when he was Chancellor: the problem of getting credit to small and medium-sized businesses that still face a credit crunch out there in the country.
I welcome the shadow Chancellor’s support for the terrorist asset freezing Bill, which, of course, has bipartisan support. Then there is the Bill that should have been introduced by the previous Government years ago—the Equitable Life payments scheme Bill to help those who lost everything and were given nothing by the Labour Government.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the fact that the Chancellor has introduced that Bill, which is an important piece of legislation, and I hope that compensation arrives for those who lost an awful lot of money. However, may I urge him to learn one thing from the miners compensation scheme, which ended up putting an awful lot of money into lawyers’ pockets—unscrupulous lawyers in many cases? Will he make sure that it is a simple, transparent scheme that does not require us to pour taxpayers’ money into lawyers’ pockets?
Mr Osborne
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. What happened with the miners compensation scheme was a tragedy, and we will certainly seek to learn the lessons of what went wrong. He is more than welcome to correspond with us—I am going to volunteer, if he wants, a meeting with one of my colleagues to discuss the issue—because we are determined to introduce the legislation and help those people who lost everything. We hope that that will command support on both sides of the House.
Finally, we will introduce a Bill to give the independent Office for Budget Responsibility statutory authority and to bring transparency and honesty to our nation’s finances. I cannot work out whether the shadow Chancellor now supports that proposal, which he opposed in government, but it is a revolutionary step in budget making, removing forever the historic power that Chancellors have had to make the official forecasts. It is based, however, on a very simple idea—perhaps completely alien to the thinking of the previous Government—that in future, we fit the Budget to fit the figures, instead of fixing the figures to fit the Budget.
With the help of Sir Alan Budd, we have established the Office for Budget Responsibility on a non-statutory basis. Today I am publishing in a written ministerial statement the terms of reference that I have agreed with Sir Alan. With his consent, I can confirm in the House for the first time that the office will produce its independent assessment of the growth forecast and other forecasts next week, on Monday 14 June. The Budget will be presented just over a week later, well within 50 days of the election, as we promised.