The Economy

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

If the hon. Lady is talking about benefit sanctions, I think that it is perfectly reasonable to ask people who are capable of work to turn up to job interviews and to make sure that they are doing everything possible to look for work. We support them while they are doing that, but the taxpayers of this country expect them to search for work.

The economic situation at the beginning of this Parliament is vastly better than the one we inherited at the start of the last Parliament. Back then, debt was soaring; today, it is projected this year to fall as a share of our national income. Back then, millions were looking for work; today, 2 million new jobs have been created. Back then, we were in the grip of an economic crisis; this week, the latest forecast is that the UK will be the fastest growing of any of the G7 economies—not just in 2014, but now in 2015 as well. That we have come so far in five years is a testament to the effort of the working people of Britain.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

One of the myths that the Conservatives have been very successful with—I credit them for it—is the suggestion that debt soared under the last Labour Government from 1997 onwards. However, according to the House of Commons Library, debt in 1997 was higher than it was in 2007-08, just before the banking crisis hit. Yes or no?

[Mr Osborne]

The idea that the last Labour Government did not leave the country with a debt crisis is laughable. The fact that the Labour party is starting this Parliament making the same argument that it made in the last one shows how much it needs to learn and listen.

[Clive Efford]

rose—

[Mr Osborne]

I am answering the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

[Mr Osborne]

The point I make to the hon. Gentleman is that national debt started rising in the very first years of the beginning of this century—in 2001 and 2002. It rose through the boom years, when the Labour Government should have been paying down the debt and should not have been running a deficit. One of the things on which the various leaders of the Labour party all seem to agree at the moment is that the deficit was too high going into the crash.

[Clive Efford]

rose—

[Mr Osborne]

I do not know who the hon. Gentleman is going to vote for in the Labour leadership contest; the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) may be the one person still sticking with the line that he is pursuing.

[Clive Efford]

rose—

[Mr Osborne]

I think I have dealt with the hon. Gentleman’s point.

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There was no institution looking at overall debt levels in our country.

[Clive Efford]

Make it up as you go along!

Tax Avoidance (HSBC)

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Monday 23rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I am not going to discuss an individual’s tax affairs, but I would say this: the hypocrisy of the Labour party on this issue is simply breathtaking. Labour Members complain about Conservative party donors and then we hear all these revelations about Labour party donors; they complain about individual accountancy firms and then it turns out that Labour collects hundreds of thousands of pounds of donations from those accountancy firms; and they complain about the alleged tax evasion at HSBC Swiss and every single one of those offences happened when Labour was in government. It is time Labour Members got up and apologised.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

No one on the Labour Benches is complaining that the Chancellor met people from HSBC 56 times—we are not surprised by that. The question is: was evasion or tax avoidance discussed at those meetings and what was the outcome of those discussions? [Interruption.]

[Mr Osborne]

I have already answered that question. [Interruption.] I have; I said it is not surprising that Ministers meet one of the largest companies in this country, which employs close to 50,000 people in Britain and, as I understand it, a quarter of a million people around the world. As I also said earlier, I am happy to write about any of the content of those meetings, which were not just with me, but across the government.

EU Budget (Surcharge)

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I do not want to discourage members of the Opposition Front-Bench team from taking to the airwaves and criticising their leader, because it is very good. It is only after the event that we hear that they think he is useless. They did not tell us that beforehand. My hon. Friend is right. The Opposition did not raise the issue—[Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor calls me to the House of Commons, he has nothing to say for himself and he has no answer to the fact that his own article reveals that he thought we were going to be paying £1.7 billion. It just confirms that he is not up to the job.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I think the Chancellor should calm down when it comes to leadership and loyalty. Why did we have a by-election last month that his party lost to the UK Independence party and why do we have another one this month? Will he confirm that the ECOFIN Ministers he discussed the rebate with are of the opinion that we will pay no less than we would have done if we had paid the full £1.7 billion on 1 December and then received our rebate?

[Mr Osborne]

As I have already said, it was not clear that the rebate would apply, which is why the shadow Chancellor, in his article in The Guardian, uses a number that assumes that we are going to pay £1.7 billion. That is what he thought we were going to pay, but we negotiated hard and had intensive discussions, and as a result we have got this result for Britain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I would suggest that it is not clear what Labour’s economic policy is. The shadow Chancellor wants to tax, borrow and spend more, but he is keeping his head down because he can see the car crash—he has experience of those—looming with the Labour leader, while the Labour leader is talking about prices and incomes policies and an anti-business agenda. It is totally muddled and means that if Labour ever got the chance again, it would put Britain back into crisis.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Chancellor talks about credibility in economic policy, yet he consistently sets his face against having his economic policies, along with those of the other major parties—certainly those that would take part in television debates before the next general election—put before the Office for Budget Responsibility so that the electorate can understand what parties are saying about economic policy and be better informed when they vote.

[Mr Osborne]

As Robert Chote has set out, there would be very serious implications if the OBR, a new institution which, of course, the Labour party did not support when in government—[Interruption.] I remember proposing it time and again as shadow Chancellor and hearing Ministers say at this Dispatch Box that it was not a good idea. The proposal would make big changes to the role of the civil service as well as that of the OBR. Robert Chote is right to say that, while we can consider it in the next Parliament:

“To embark on this exercise in a rush, or with insufficient resources, could be…very damaging to the OBR.”

Economic Growth

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

That was certainly an odd speech from the shadow Chancellor. He called me a tactical genius, but those on his side are going around calling him a busted flush, and after the extraordinary 40 minutes of comments we have just heard from him, we can see why. The contrast is with a Government who are building an economy where those who want to work hard and get on are rewarded. The contrast is with a tax system that is being changed to support effort, with the largest ever increase in the personal allowance. The contrast is with a welfare system that is being changed so it always pays to work and benefit bills are being capped so no family gets more from being on benefits and out of work than the average family gets from being in work.

In this Queen’s Speech we have measures to help those who want to set up a small business and employ people through our employment allowance—which was not mentioned by the shadow Chancellor, but I assume the Labour party will not vote against it. We have measures to help families who dream of home ownership and to help them with their mortgage costs. We have measures for savers, with a Pensions Bill that will provide a generous single-tier pension, and we have measures to help those who want to stay in their homes and avoid the lottery of care costs, with our Care Bill. The only reason we can do all these things is because we are clearing up the mess and the things that went so badly wrong in our economy.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

On the issue of fairness, the 13,000 people who earn more than £1 million a year share a combined income of £27.4 billion, and they are going to share in a £1.2 billion payout. How can that be justified and fair?

[Mr Osborne]

In every single year under this Government the rich will pay more in tax than in any single year of the Labour Government that the hon. Gentleman consistently supported, and the top rate of tax will be higher than in any single year of the Labour Government he supported. We put up capital gains tax so we avoided the scandal that they presided over—indeed, that the shadow Chancellor presided over—of cleaners paying higher rates of tax than the hedge fund managers they work for. That is what we have done to ensure fairness in our tax system, and that is what we are going to continue to do.

LIBOR (FSA Investigation)

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The Serious Fraud Office is independent of the Government, but it is pursuing every avenue to see whether it can bring criminal prosecutions in this case. This is, however, a matter for the SFO, which is going to come back to us by the end of the month to tell us whether it can do so, and it will have heard what the House has said today. We also want to ensure that in future the regulators have the criminal sanctions that they need, and that is why we seek these investigations to change the law now, rather than waiting four or five years to do so.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

How can it be right, and in line with the Government’s credibility on wanting to clean up the banking system, when those who were responsible and in management at the time of these criminal activities—both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have today accepted that criminal activities were going on—remain in post, such as Mr Bob Diamond?

[Mr Osborne]

As the Prime Minister said and I repeat, Mr Diamond has to account for himself before the Treasury Committee this week, and I congratulate the Committee on doing that. The chairman of Barclays has resigned, but it is not the job of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to hire and fire the bank chiefs at this Dispatch Box. I am not sure that we want to go down that path; it is much better for the shareholders to do it, the board to do it, and they will have the appearance before the Committee of Mr Diamond to go on.

LIBOR (FSA Investigation)

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Where I would agree with the hon. Gentleman is that regulation cannot do everything and we need the right culture of management in the banks, but there is also a job for the regulators here. One of the purposes of the Financial Services Bill is to put the Bank of England in charge and allow the regulator to exercise more judgment. As I have said before in the House, the Royal Bank of Scotland ticked every single box when it came to its takeover of ABN AMRO, yet many people were asking at the end of 2007, “Is that a sensible transaction?” We need the regulators to be empowered to make judgment calls, not just to check whether every line of the regulation has been complied with.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I agree with everything that the Chancellor said in his statement, but following that, all he has done is try to heap responsibility on the Opposition Front-Bench team, rather than dealing with the bankers who are at the heart of the problem. We all know that lighter-touch regulation would have come in had he been Chancellor at the same time. That is not the point. The point is that people out there are angry. Those people are thieves and criminals, and they have made beggars of many of our constituents, who want to know what this Government are going to do about it. Can the Chancellor say whether the financial regulatory Bill before the House deals with all the issues that have been raised as a result of the report from the FSA yesterday? If not, what is he going to do about it?

[Mr Osborne]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman what this Government are doing. First, we are getting rid of the tripartite system that failed. Secondly, we are changing—[Interruption.] I will tell hon. Members what failed—the regulation of financial services. The hon. Gentleman’s constituents and mine and everyone else are paying a very heavy price for that, so we are changing the regulator, changing the structure of banks in order to have ring-fenced retail banks—

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford]

No. The right hon. Gentleman is doing nothing. It is business as usual.

[Mr Osborne]

The hon. Gentleman voted for 13 years for a Government who failed this country. We are changing the regulation, changing the structure of banking—[Interruption.] and we are dealing with this latest abuse— [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We have heard the question. The hon. Gentleman should have the courtesy to listen to the answer, even if he does not like it. There is no need to get so excited—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

1. What recent assessment he has made of the level of taxation levied on the banking industry.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs published details of total pay-as-you-earn and corporation tax receipts from the banking sector for the first time on 31 August. The official statistics show that tax receipts from the sector increased from £17.3 billion in 2009-10 to £21 billion in 2010-11. A number of other taxes are incurred by the banking sector that the Office for National Statistics did not include in the figures, including the new bank levy introduced by this Government, which we expect will raise an additional £2.5 billion net each year, which is more in each and every year than the previous Government raised in their one-off payroll tax.

[Clive Efford]

I am grateful to the Chancellor for that answer, but the truth is that the High Pay Commission has just published a report demonstrating that high executive pay bears no relation to the performance of companies and that nowhere is this more starkly illustrated than in the banking sector. Meanwhile, youth unemployment is going up. Is it not time we made the banking sector pay its fair share in order to do something for the young unemployed in this country, as advocated by the Opposition?

[Mr Osborne]

That is why we introduced the bank levy, which Labour had 13 years to introduce but did not. It raises £2.5 billion. We are also taking action to clamp down on tax avoidance. We recently proposed a measure to tackle something called disguised remuneration, whereby high earners, often in the financial services sector, disguise their income to avoid tax, but the Labour party voted against the measure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Unfortunately, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, the Government Chief Whip, is not here to listen to that question, but as Ministers in the Government Whips have already taken a 5% pay cut and had their salaries frozen during the Parliament, so they have already shown some restraint. If my hon. Friend wants to catch the ear of the Chief Whip in the Aye Lobby tonight, he can do so.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Has the Government Whips Office had cause to contact the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, following his comments last week? Has having the Liberal Democrats as part of the Government increased the costs of the Government Whips Office?

[Mr Osborne]

The presence of the Liberal Democrats in the coalition means that two parties are working together to sort out a problem that one party created.

Proposed Public Expenditure Cuts

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend said some very good things about how the Opposition treat the rest of the country like children.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Formula grant for local government is about £24.5 billion, made up of just over £3 billion in revenue support grant and just over £21 billion from business rates. The cut is £6 billion, which leaves about £3 billion income from business rates that is not being redistributed in formula grant. Would not a good use of that money be the protection of the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities from the ravages of the cuts being imposed by the Government? Exactly how will businesses be accountable for what that £3 billion is used for?

[Mr Osborne]

As well as considering reforms to the formula grant, we took some steps earlier this year, and we hope to take further steps, to increase the freedoms that local authorities have to spend the money and to have fewer ring-fenced programmes from central Government Departments. We are looking at a review of the formula grant.

Office for Budget Responsibility

Debate between Clive Efford and George Osborne

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

It was repeatedly opposed by Treasury Ministers when I proposed it. Indeed, one of the most vocal and eloquent opponents was the shadow Education Secretary—I know that the shadow Chancellor has not always got on with him—who put the arguments on why Labour was opposed. If the Labour party wants to change its mind, we are all ears.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

What has the OBR had to say about predictions of levels of unemployment and how they differ from those predicted in the March Budget?

[Mr Osborne]

For the first time, the OBR has published five-year projections of unemployment and employment. The projection for the coming year, for example, is that employment will fall and unemployment will rise—based, of course, on the pre-Budget measures.