Eurozone Crisis

John Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

We have always accepted that the remorseless logic of monetary union is closer fiscal integration. I believe that this crisis demonstrates that monetary union needs to be underpinned by closer fiscal integration. That is not a new expression on my part; I said nothing novel; the Government have taken this view for some time. We need to ensure that the institutional arrangements are in place to support that. What I think hon. Members on all sides of the House want is a stable eurozone because it will contribute towards economic recovery in the UK.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

As joining a single currency is like taking out a joint bank account with the neighbours, when does the Minister think the neighbours will agree how much overdraft they can afford and who gets to pay the bill for it?

[Mr Hoban]

My right hon. Friend will recognise that the agreement that was reached in the European Council last week and then later in the summit of eurozone Governments was on what size the bail-out for Greece should be and what the ring fence should be around that. We welcome last week’s announcement. What is very clear, however, is that more work needs to be done on those questions—particularly what the size of the overdraft will be and who will pay for it. We need eurozone leaders to move that forward as quickly as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Redwood Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

As I was saying, this morning we had the news that our GDP is growing by 0.5%—[Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] Well, GDP fell by about 6% when Labour was in office and when the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) was advising the last Prime Minister. If we look at growth in France or Germany, the most recent figures show that it was either negative or growing at about 0.1%. The instability in the eurozone and the uncertainty in the world are having an effect on all western economies at the moment, and we have to sort that out, but that is not an excuse for Britain not to deal with its problems, which were created by that lot sitting over there.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend ensure, if he is not using our veto against more fiscal integration, that Britain gets something out of the deal? Do we not need the right to opt out of any past or future EU measure that could damage jobs and prosperity at home?

[Mr Osborne]

We have already extracted a price for the European Stability Mechanism treaty that the eurozone wants to put forward by getting ourselves out of the EU bail-out mechanism to which the last Government had committed us. We are working to keep the increase in the EU budget to a real freeze. In other words, we have, I think, proved in office that we can extract important concessions and in the case of the EU bail-out fund we have actually taken a power back to Britain. That will be the approach we take to future discussions and negotiations—putting Britain’s national interest first.

Jobs and Growth

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Chancellor for giving way. I welcome the work that he and his colleagues are doing on a growth strategy, which he said is needed. A big component of that is the £75 billion of quantitative easing. We are also told that there will be credit easing to get the money into private companies. Will that be on top of the £75 billion injection or within it?

[Mr Osborne]

It will be on top of the £75 billion. I have not gone through the QE and credit easing policies in detail today because I went through them in the House on Monday, but I would be happy to do so if Members like. QE is an operation undertaken by the Bank of England under the procedures established by my predecessor. The credit easing options that we are looking at involve the Treasury—or rather the Government—using its balance sheet to get money to small businesses either by purchasing securitised small loans, purchasing mid-cap company bonds in the bond market or issuing guarantees through the banking system. All those things currently happen in Britain, but on a very small scale. Our intention is greatly to increase them, and I will set out the proposals in November.

Eurozone

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I welcome the shadow Chancellor to his place. When I heard that the Labour leadership were clearing out their shadow Treasury Front-Bench team today, I was worried that the Conservative party would lose its greatest electoral asset, but it is great to see him still in his place.

Let me address the right hon. Gentleman’s specific questions. First, he asked about the exposures to eurozone nations. The FSA publishes the appropriate information on that, on the exposures overall to peripheral economies and to other eurozone banks, and it is appropriate that it does so. On RBS, I touched specifically on that issue, because there has been speculation, but let me make it very clear: in our assessment, and in that of the FSA, RBS is well capitalised and liquid.

On the eurozone facility, let me answer the right hon. Gentleman’s specific question. I believe that it should be broad in application, as well as deeper in funds, and undertake as many operations as is required. He talks about meetings, but let me reassure him that I have been to many, many meetings over the past few weeks. There has not been a shortage of meetings; there has been a lack of leadership from eurozone leaders in those meetings. But, that is changing, and that is very welcome.

Frankly, it is absolutely astonishing that a shadow Chancellor, who led his entire party through the Division Lobby in July to vote against the increase in IMF resources initiated at the London summit by the previous Prime Minister, should accuse us of a lack of leadership in the international community. Let us just imagine if that vote had been won—presumably the right hon. Gentleman cast his vote hoping to win the Division—we, alone in the world, I think, would not be ratifying the increase in IMF resources, and I would have to turn up at those meetings and explain, “I am very sorry, but the British House of Commons does not want to use the Bretton Woods institutions to help us with one of the greatest financial crises of the century.” As I say, his lectures on leadership come a little thin, and perhaps he should practise what he preaches.

I end by saying this. We will have our debate on the British economy, but it would be hard to imagine the shadow Chancellor coming back from the Labour conference with his party’s economic credibility even lower than it was before he began the conference season, but there is still no recognition from him that his Government spent too much money, ran up a big budget deficit when times were good and spent more money than they had available—even though that is acknowledged by Tony Blair, who was Prime Minister at the time. The shadow Chancellor still thinks that the answer to a debt crisis is to spend more money. His five-point plan is, of course, a complete abandonment of the plan set out by the last Chancellor of the Exchequer, to which, as I understood it, the Labour party was still in theory committed.

When we listen to the combined speeches of the shadow Chancellor and the Leader of the Opposition, they seem to amount to more regulation and more tax on businesses—indeed, they confirm the Labour party’s reputation as the anti-business party. The shadow Chancellor has managed to get the Labour party into an extraordinary position for an Opposition—of complete irrelevance: irrelevant at home and irrelevant abroad. The leader of the Labour party asked a good question—“Why would you bring Fred Goodwin back to run the banks?” But why on earth would we bring the shadow Chancellor back to run the British economy?

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

When the Chancellor gave his authority to create another £75 billion of money, what forecast was he given about the impact that that will have in the next couple of years on the price level and therefore on real incomes? So far it has been high inflation that has clobbered real incomes and depressed demand.

[Mr Osborne]

As my right hon. Friend will know, in its most recent quarterly bulletin, the Bank of England did an assessment of the impact that the previous round of quantitative easing had had; it thought that that had increased GDP by 1.5% to 2%, but that it had also increased inflation. However, the Bank was very clear that in recommending or requesting further quantitative easing, it was still aiming to hit its inflation target in the required two-year period.

European Union Fiscal Union

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Cash]

I endorse entirely what my hon. Friend has said. We are at a crossroads and it is a very dangerous crossroads. We have to get it right. It simply is not good enough to appease the European institutions by going along with their ideas when we have our own national interest to stand by, support and protect. We are not just talking about institutional arguments; we are talking about real people, their real daily lives, the unemployed and the people who cannot increase the enterprise of their businesses.

I was deeply concerned in my exchanges with the Prime Minister. I put a question to him on the question of the single market. In reply, he made it clear that he was conscious of a fact, which I had put in a pamphlet that I had published the day before. The pamphlet, by the way, is called “It’s the EU stupid”, because we have got to a stage where it is obvious that the EU is at the root of so many of these problems.

On the question of the single market, I pointed out to the Prime Minister that if there is a fiscal union of certain member states it is inevitable, as a matter of solidarity, that they will use the treaties to transfer their own wishes, through majority voting and a block vote, in a way that will be contrary to our own domestic economic interests. What would be the point of a fiscal union if, when it came to questions of legislation relating to the economy, the member states were not prepared to vote together? They will. When they do, and they outvote us, that will gravely undermine our competitiveness and our ability to grow small and medium-sized businesses. It will affect our growth. It will damage and destroy our prospects of reducing the deficit, because it will lead to a reduction in growth, which is already stagnant.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend think that we should allow the fiscal union to go ahead, for those who wish to join it, if our Government negotiated for us independent democratic control over everything here that mattered to us as the price for making that sacrifice?

[Mr Cash]

The short answer is that it would depend on how the renegotiation went. If the renegotiation was entirely in line with protecting fully our own interests, if it were guaranteed that we were not tied to the existing arrangements by a treaty that drew us in to all the adverse consequences of being part of this overall European Union in the shape and form that it has at the moment and if we could manage to achieve the perfect answer, then that would be a good idea. However, I do not think that that is the way it is going to go. I think that we will put forward positions, if we ever get to the point of renegotiating the treaties. A meeting took place a couple of days ago in which it was clear that a very large number of MPs in the Conservative party want renegotiation. Some of us have been arguing for that for 20 years. However, the fact is that that is the position in the party as a whole. The question is not only whether we want to renegotiate, but how that would be done.

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[Mr Redwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the situation causes the electorate to believe that we have a dishonest political debate in this country? We are having a big argument over the Vickers report and how and when it should be implemented, whereas it will all be settled under the capital requirements directive, CRD IV. I do not see the point of the Vickers report.

[Mr Cash]

That is all part of the problem. I have been on the European Scrutiny Committee for 26 years now, and over and over again I have found that legislation brought to this House is based on European legislation, but that is never disclosed. People do not say, “Oh, by the way, we have got to do this, therefore we are going to,” so we go through a charade of passing legislation as if we have control over it. The Whips move in like the clappers, saying, “You can’t possibly vote against this, because it’s all based on European legislation that we have already agreed to under the European Communities Act.” In reality, we are being governed by Europe, and that is my greatest objection—plus the democratic question, which the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton has mentioned—and why I got so exercised about the Maastricht treaty. We have gone beyond that now, and what we are faced with is much more critical, but we can remedy it if we renegotiate the treaties.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Redwood Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Now we can see why the former Chancellor has said that the Labour party had no credible economic policy. The shadow Chancellor had all summer to think of that question, and the best he came up with was that we were not regulating the banks. He was the City Minister when the City exploded. We have taken action better to regulate the banks. We set up the commission that will report next week. As for downgraded numbers, the fastest falling numbers around here are his economic credibility numbers.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

It would be good to get more tax out of RBS, a state-owned bank, but unfortunately it is still loss making. Will the Chancellor or a relevant Minister have an urgent meeting with its executives so that they can have a better plan for cutting risks, selling assets and making some money for the taxpayer?

[Mr Osborne]

My right hon. Friend is, of course, right that the British banking system has had its challenges—not least over the summer, with its share prices. We are in regular discussion with the banks about that, of course, and we will of course have many discussions about the future structure of banking. We need a profitable banking sector that lends to the real economy. We have in place targets to see an increase in lending to small businesses. But my right hon. Friend is absolutely right that a key part of the recovery is a return to health for the financial services industry and the financial system.

Global Economy

John Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We have announced an enterprise zone for Sheffield and we will have further announcements to make on enterprise zones in the coming weeks. The evidence of the past 10 years is that in important regions of our country—I have in mind the statistics for the west midlands, rather than for the hon. Lady’s constituency—private sector employment fell over the decade before the financial crash. That shows that that model of growth we pursued, based on the biggest housing boom of any country—with the possible exception of Ireland—the most over-leveraged banks and the highest budget deficit, ultimately led to ruin. We need a different model of growth in which we grow the private sector in areas such as Sheffield and get real, lasting jobs, rather than assuming that we can just use Government spending to create them.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

As someone who believes that we need to get the deficit down and do more to assist growth to help that, will the Chancellor look at the dreadful losses at RBS and the big hit on capital values on its shares, and see what more can be done to manage that colossal pool of assets in the interests of economic growth and the taxpayer?

[Mr Osborne]

We of course continue to monitor the situation at RBS and all the British banks very closely. There is a concern in the financial markets about the capitalisation and liquidity provisions of banks in many countries. I have to say that those concerns have not been expressed at the moment about the UK. We passed the stress tests well and we have a strong liquidity provision in place for the banks, including RBS, and the markets can therefore have confidence in British banks.

Taxation: Domicile

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Ministerial Corrections

[Mr Redwood]

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) what estimate he has made of the number of non-domiciled UK taxpayers who will pay the annual levy in (a) 2011-12 and (b) 2012-13;

Finance Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I thank my hon. Friend. One of the delightful things about his intervention is the increase in my education.

Over seven years from 1990, tax relief for the over-60s cost £560 million. However, that included a period when the relief was across all taxpayer rates. In 1994, that was reduced to apply to the basic rate of tax only. Unlike in my proposal, the relief started then at 60, not at 65, so my proposal would reduce the cost to the Revenue in real terms compared to pre-1997.

In 1997 the Labour Government cancelled the tax relief for pensioners, and Western Provident Association estimated that 40% of pensioners would discontinue their private health service. Which? magazine reported in 2002 that private health insurance coverage was lowest in the 65-plus age group. Those who choose to have personally funded private health insurance pay twice for their health—premiums and tax. It would be safe to assume that nigh on 100% of those aged 65 and above are personally funding their health insurance. It is their choice, and for many it may mean sacrificing other choices that may affect their lifestyle.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend also give us some idea of the saving in NHS expenses that results from people taking out cover and going privately?

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I would love to, but I am numerically dyslexic and English is my second language so I have some difficulty. I am sure that the next time I raise this possibility, I can bring those facts forward.

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[Mr Jones]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not understand why a low-paid worker in South Stanley in my constituency who has worked hard all his or her life should be given no tax relief or assistance and should pay their taxes just to give a tax relief and perk to individuals who not only might be able to pay for care, but who have an advantage over them. We should seek to ensure equal access to health care.

I understand what has been said about waiting lists and the health service, but when I was elected in 2001 my constituency contained two old hospitals, one of which—the old workhouse—was a disgrace. We now have two new hospitals, thanks to a Labour Government. The hon. Member for Mole Valley mentioned hip and knee replacements, and I can tell him that the industrial legacy of a mining community meant that my area had a long waiting list; it was not uncommon for people to wait for more than two years. I recall people coming to my surgery arguing about how they could get up the list any faster. Waiting lists have more or less been abolished over the intervening 10-year period, which is testament to the changes the previous Labour Government made and the investment we put in. Investment in the health service should be about ensuring equal access to care, not about giving a tax perk to a very small section of the population—the less than 5% who actually have private health insurance—as this proposal seeks to do.

[Mr Redwood]

I would be more persuaded by this argument if the Labour party had, when in office, prevented the rich from buying the health care they wanted when they wanted it. The truth is that neither the Labour party in office, nor the coalition Government, have had any intention of preventing the rich from using their power and wealth to get the health care they want. The new clause is a measure to enable people who are not that rich to be able to do so.

[Mr Jones]

The facts do not bear that out, and I shall return to that point in a moment. If people wish to spend their money on health care, that is entirely up to them—I am not opposed to that. What I am saying is that I and others should not be subsidising that choice. We should be putting the money, as the Labour Government did, into ensuring that the general population have access to good-quality NHS care and do not have to worry about the cost.

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[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I am sure that people across the country would be astonished to discover that the first priority of Back-Bench Tories on health spending is to give a tax concession to people who pay, on average, £2,000 a year towards health insurance, because most people over 65 are in no position to pay such a sum towards health insurance. Most people across the country, including many pensioners, and perhaps even those pensioners who have private health insurance, think that the first priority for spending should be to avoid some of the cuts that the Government are already introducing and to direct spending to the national health service.

[Mr Redwood]

I just want to correct the record, because our first priority was to have a wider range of drugs to treat cancer, as we thought that the previous system was too meanly constructed, and we were proud of the Government when they made that the No. 1 priority for extra spending.

[Frank Dobson]

But that decision has been and gone, and I do not think there was any opposition to it across the House, but we are now talking about the Bill. The Government now propose that the first priority should be to spend the best part of £200 million to give a subsidy to people who are already sufficiently well off that they can pay £2,000 on average towards their private health care costs. I do not think that that is a sensible priority for anyone concerned about health care. I hope that no Tory Members, or Lib Dem Members if they support this proposal, will parade outside their local hospitals saying, “Please don’t get rid of 200 nurses, or some of the doctors, or our ambulance and emergency service, and please don’t take away our maternity unit.” That will be because some of their colleagues thought that the first priority was to spend £200 million on people who are considerably better off than the average.

Government Members have said that the rich can afford to buy private health care and that most rich pensioners already have it. Some extreme marketeer right-wingers both here and in the United States think that health insurance should be abolished because, if people have to pay for health care costs out of their income or savings, they will be a source of pressure to bring down those costs, but Government Back Benchers have not reached that extreme marketisation approach yet.

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[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend is entirely correct that that is the case for the vast majority of people. Of course, care is often continued for highly paid executives, the group of people whom Conservative Members seek to help—as I have said, the Conservatives are the party of the very few, not the many. However, he is entirely right that the vast majority of US citizens lose their private health cover in that situation. That is why Opposition Members have worked so hard to resist the attempts of the Secretary of State and his Liberal cohorts to introduce privatisation by the back door.

I am conscious that the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) will wish to make his closing arguments prior to dividing the House. We look forward to seeing the strength of feeling that exists, and I urge Liberal Democrat Members to stand up for the health service and stand up to their Conservative allies.

[Mr Redwood]

I should like to make it absolutely clear that this matter is not my No. 1 priority, and I do not think it is the No. 1 priority of all Conservative Members. We were elected on a manifesto that said that we were going to increase spending on the NHS in the traditional way by several billion pounds a year, and that pledge is going to be honoured.

[Thomas Docherty]

No it’s not; you’ve broken it.

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman should read the Red Book. It clearly shows substantial cash increases in spending on health every year over the lifetime of this Parliament.

[Thomas Docherty]

The reality is that the increase in spending is lower than the increase in inflation, so it is a real-terms cut.

[Mr Redwood]

We have kept the promise to have substantial increases in cash spending. It is now very important that we get the maximum for it. We are in danger of wandering too far from the new clause, but I point out that as we are about to enter a period of wage freezes, a substantial increase in cash funding will obviously buy more health care, because the main cost is wages. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that. The Government’s clear priority was to expand cancer treatments and other drugs, and to ensure that we have more high-quality care. I welcome that very much.

The second thing to understand about the new clause is that it is not a help-the-rich new clause. Opposition Members should understand that the rich are not going to be attracted by an offset on 20% tax, because they are either non-doms paying very little tax or they are paying 50% tax. They are people who self-insure, so they are not going to take out insurance policies such as we are discussing. We are not dealing with the rich, because the rich have always been able to buy the health care that they want under any type of Government. That would not change as a result of the new clause.

We are talking about a specific group of people who are coming up to retirement. Some of them will have had the benefit of company scheme insurance, and some will not have had the benefit of insurance at all. At 65, they often have an important decision to take, because several things happen. First, they lose their company health insurance, if they were receiving it. Secondly, their insurance premiums go up a lot, because they are suddenly thought to be higher risk. Thirdly, they enter the age group when they will need a lot more health care than they did in their healthy, earning years when they were executives or whatever. We are talking about whether that group of people should be able to carry on their insurance, and whether such an incentive would make any difference.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give the House some indication of what proportion of the population he is talking about, and what sort of income scale they are on, including retirement income?

[Mr Redwood]

I will give as much precision as the Leader of the Opposition and say that they are the squeezed middle. They are exactly the people in whom the Opposition are meant to be interested but whom they clearly now wish to attack in the debate.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Mr Redwood]

I give way first to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright).

[Mr Wright]

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us how much the measures in the new clause would cost?

[Mr Redwood]

I will take the other intervention before I respond.

[Mr Jones]

I can help the right hon. Gentleman and say that the proportion of people who would be helped is 5% of the population.

[Mr Redwood]

That may have been the case in the past, but what we are interested in is the new clause.

The answer to the hon. Member for Hartlepool is that no, I cannot tell him that. It is not my new clause and I have not researched the matter. I was about to say that I would be more likely to vote for it if a case could be made on the money involved. It seems to me that it would be a good-value purchase if the savings on health care that it generated for the NHS were considerable. We need to balance the two things—we need to know what the revenue loss would be, based on a sensible estimate of take-up, and what the savings to the NHS would be.

The Labour party has to accept that it is not a one-sided matter. The whole point of the scheme is that there would be cost savings to the NHS. That money going into the NHS could then be spent on other people and other treatment. The NHS may still have to do the really difficult things for the people involved, but there could still be an overall benefit both to them and to the NHS if the extra money coming through the private sector led to extra care.

The fundamental mistake that we have heard from the Opposition tonight in their approach to these issues—although it was not the mistake of many Labour Ministers—is the idea that the resources to be provided are finite, to be used either in the private sector or in the public sector. The whole idea, surely, is that we need more resources, more trained people, more treatments, more supplies and more medical activity, because people are living longer, they need more health treatments and the population is growing for a variety of reasons.

As some of my hon. Friends have said, the one big gap between Britain and our European partners, which are normally the example held out by the Labour party, is the amount of private sector money that goes into health in Britain. It is a considerably smaller proportion than in countries such as Germany or France or the Scandinavian countries. If Labour Members are interested in the squeezed middle, they would be well advised to consider any scheme that might help to increase or release private sector money in health in a way that creates more resources, more medically trained people, and more medical treatment.

[Oliver Heald]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that a more substantial private sector would help the NHS, because at times of great busyness in the NHS, it is to the private sector that the NHS looks to do the necessary operations? That happens right across the country, and it is one reason why it has been possible to bear down on waiting times.

[Mr Redwood]

That is exactly what successive Ministers and Secretaries of State for Health in the Labour Government concluded, with the honourable exception of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). After him came the modernising Secretaries of State and Ministers who felt that they had to turn to the private sector to achieve better standards—in terms of offering people treatment in a timely way—and to expand the total capacity of the system.

[Frank Dobson]

My successors, to whom the right hon. Gentleman refers, sometimes make rather wild claims about the number of cataract operations that are carried out by the private sector. When Labour came to power, the NHS did 167,000 cataract operations a year, and in the last year for which figures are available it did 346,000. The private sector made the massive contribution of 16,000 in its best year.

[Mr Redwood]

The right hon. Gentleman may well be right. It is quite obvious that the NHS is the dominant health provider in our country—it has been for the many years since its foundation, and it will continue to be so under any schemes proposed by any governing party or parties in this House of Commons.

I wanted to concentrate on the cost and benefit of the proposals. I am an agnostic on this issue, which may come as a surprise to the House, because I am far from being a deficit denier, and I believe that we must weigh carefully any proposal for tax relief against other such proposals. In this case, I would be interested to know more about what the savings would be. There could be significant savings. If Ministers do not adopt the proposed scheme, they need to introduce others to promote more private health care of the right kind, because we will need a lot more of that to meet our targets and requirements, alongside the very large, and rightly favoured and supported, NHS.

Perhaps my hon. Friends the Members for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald), who have spoken so strongly for the new clauses, wish to move closer to the Liberal Democrat coalition partners. Perhaps they had ringing in their minds the words of the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), who set out a comprehensive universal insurance scheme for health in the Orange Book. We will have to disappoint him today, because the proposal is modest, and it will not cover nearly as many people as he would like. Were he here, we could debate that with him, and perhaps he would see that caution and moderation is the hallmark of Conservative approaches to such things. This proposal might be the way to get started on the journey that he wished to make.

[Mr Iain Wright]

In terms of spending on health, does the right hon. Gentleman believe that we should move away from a policy of funding through general taxation and towards comprehensive medical insurance, which is the policy advocated by the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws)?

[Mr Redwood]

No, I was just wondering whether my hon. Friends had that in mind, knowing how much they treasure the coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and knowing that such bold statements were made in the Orange Book by no less than a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who presumably knew the price of everything and the value of some things, and who would want to ensure value for money.

I hope that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench consider the wider issue that was rightly raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley. How do we get extra resources and money spent on health in a friendly and sensible way, on top of the very great and important NHS, which my hon. Friends the Members for Mole Valley, for Christchurch and for North East Hertfordshire rightly back? If not by their route, what route? May we please have some numbers? The proposal could be a good-value buy, but that depends very much on how much cost would be taken out of the NHS.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I have one or two things to say about this debate, and I was stirred into standing up by the previous speech, because either woolly-headed logic was being used by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), or he was making a deliberate statement to try to cover—

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[Michael Connarty]

You know, Mr Deputy Speaker, there is amazing technology in this place. Members can sit in their offices and, if they wish, not watch the tennis but follow the debate in detail, and come down to the Chamber when they think it might be useful to add something. I recommend it to Members: turn off the tennis, turn on the Chamber.

The point I was making is that the logic used by the right hon. Member for Wokingham was possibly deliberately to convince the public that the proposal is an effort to add extra resources to the health services by encouraging people to put money into private health insurance. The logic, of course, is that such private health insurance is available to some people when they are in employment, but is denied them when they retire. If that is the kind of employer that people have, it is a shame that they are deluded into thinking that insurance is a substitute for taxation-based health services.

The right hon. Gentleman stated that resources are not finite, and that somehow this money would bring new resources rushing into the health service. Everyone who has studied the health service over the time I have been in elected politics, which is since 1977, knows what happens. The consultant and the surgeon choose whether to work in the private sector or in the public sector. Sometimes they choose to work in a mixture of those. I commend those who decide to work entirely in the public sector, because they give the best value to our constituents, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) said when, in an intervention, he cited the number of operations for cataracts.

However, the reality is that only a limited number of people get to the top of the elitist profession that is the medical profession, particularly to consultant level, because we do not train enough people to do the work that is required in the health service.

[Mr Redwood]

Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that in countries that have a bigger private sector on top of a large public sector, there are more doctors and nurses in relation to the population, because there is more money?

[Michael Connarty]

The right hon. Gentleman leads me to my next point. He recommended that we look at the EU system. I am glad that in reply to an intervention from one of my hon. Friends he said that he objects to the idea of a comprehensive, insurance-based health service in this country. I, too, have looked at that on the continent and in EU countries, and I have seen that it does not work.

In fact, other EU countries do have a larger number of doctors—there are more doctors per head of population in most of them than in this country—but that is because of the elitist structure of the medical profession in this country. That structure keeps the numbers down and pays huge bonuses to people once they get to the higher gradings. Many of those people are the very same ones who moonlight in the private sector for additional personal financial gain.

The Economy

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

I think the question that people will be asking in the hon. Gentleman’s local newspaper is this: why does he oppose a tax cut that would provide £450 for every family this year, and would boost failing confidence?

The hon. Member for West Suffolk does not seem to have turned up. It is so disappointing that he is not here, as he was last time, because I had a very good contribution for him.

Let me now set aside the Chancellor’s wild and nonsensical political attempts to draw parallels between Britain and Greece, and make a serious point about what is happening in Greece and how it affects the United Kingdom. The issue now is not whether Britain does or does not contribute to a further EU financial package for Greece. Like the Chancellor—I think—I believe that that would be the wrong thing for our country to do. It seems to me that we have reached a point at which talk of more temporary liquidity austerity packages, and further tough talking, is no longer working.

EU Finance Ministers must face the fact that Greece needs economic growth to succeed. Otherwise, it will be stuck in a debt trap. It is now very hard to see how Greece can stay in the single currency without a change of strategy on fiscal austerity and a substantial restructuring. The fact is, however, that it is precisely because the UK is outside the eurozone—and thank goodness we are; I will take an intervention on that if any Member wishes to intervene—and because our banks are less exposed to Greek debts than those in Germany and France that Britain should be an honest broker in these discussions. We are in a position to present an objective argument for immediate and co-ordinated action to restore jobs and growth and start reducing the debt, along with a sustainable, long-term plan for its reduction. However, we can do that without being accused by the people of Greece that we are merely looking after our own interests.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ed Balls]

No.

What happened this week when there was the chance to show some leadership? Throughout the crisis, our Chancellor’s only concern has been to make short-term domestic political capital out of the crisis.

[Mr Redwood]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ed Balls]

No. I am making a serious point.

In every crisis since 1997—the Asian crisis, the dotcom crisis, the Russian crisis, and the global financial crisis of 2008—Britain was constantly at the centre of discussions attempting to establish a solution for the future.

[Mr Redwood]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ed Balls]

In one second.

For the first time in 14 years we have a Chancellor and a Prime Minister who are on the sidelines, silent, irrelevant and ignored. I believe that whatever the outcome of the present crisis—whatever happens in the eurozone and to Greece—people will say that we had a Chancellor of the Exchequer who was not there, who did not deliver, who was out of his depth, and who could not contribute to the long-term reforms that were needed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Redwood]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

Now I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Redwood]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very important point. The United Kingdom can make an important contribution to the debate, but it obviously should not lend money directly to Greece. Is he saying that he thinks the only way out for Greece now is a rescheduling of its debt and agreement on the fact that there must be a change of pattern to secure the necessary growth and enable the economy to accelerate?

[Ed Balls]

In a moment I will deal with the parallel with the United Kingdom. Let me say first, however, that the lesson of history shows that it is not possible to deal with a solvency crisis by providing liquidity package after liquidity package, because that does not reach the heart of the issue. On the contrary, it makes the position worse and worse. At some point people will have to face up to that. Package after package has been agreed, but that has not worked. The debt has not gone down; it has gone up.

History teaches us that three things are necessary to the credibility of a plan, whether it involves monetary policy or fiscal policy. First, the plan must be for the medium term; secondly, there must be political support for it; and thirdly, it must work. If it does not work, that will eventually rebound on political support, as we have seen in Greece in recent weeks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Osborne]

Of course there are economists, including Lord Skidelsky, who have made their views clear, but there are just as many—indeed, more—economists on the other side of the argument. The economic institutions that govern our world—the IMF, the OECD, and the European Commission, which does not govern our world, but produced a recent report on the British economy—all made the same point. We can set ourselves completely against world opinion, as the shadow Chancellor has done, because he cannot admit that the country had huge problems coming up to the financial crisis. He cannot do that or he would put himself centre stage. That is what this is all about, but the world has moved on and the Labour party has not yet moved on with it.

[Mr Redwood]

The Red Book says that current public spending will rise 3.8% this year in cash terms and it is running a little higher than that at present. Given that there is to be a public sector pay freeze, is it the intention that there should be a real increase in public spending this year? Does that not put the debate into some kind of context?

[Mr Osborne]

My right hon. Friend draws attention to the fact that although we have had to take very difficult decisions—everybody understands and sees that—we are not facing the sort of catastrophic scenario painted by the Opposition. The shadow Chancellor talked about Greece perhaps having to default and leave the euro, and as it is not in primary balance and it has a big budget deficit, that would lead to even more draconian cuts. The truth is that if we had not put in place a credible, measured, staggered plan to reduce the budget deficit, we would have been forced by the international markets into making much deeper cuts.