Oral Answers to Questions

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman’s soundbites get weaker and weaker as his leadership gets weaker and weaker; that is the truth of it. If we look at what we have done in lifting 1.1 million people out of tax, it is mostly women who benefit. If we look at the increase in the pension—£5.35 starting next April—that will benefit mostly women. If we consider the issue of public sector pensions, we are helping the lowest-paid in the public sector, and that will help women. Yes, we are giving the economy a stimulus by keeping our interest rates low. We have interest rates at 2%, while they are at 5% in Italy, 5% in Spain and 30% in Greece. If we followed his advice we would have interest rates rocketing, businesses going bust and more people out of work. That is what Labour offers, and that is why it will never be trusted on our economy again.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Small and medium-sized enterprises in my constituency are still having grave difficulty in accessing reasonable finance. A major contributory factor in that is lack of competition. Will the Government consider breaking up the nationalised banks to create more competition on the high street?

[The Prime Minister]

I do think we have opportunities to increase competition on the high street, and obviously, as we look to return the state banks to the private sector we will have further opportunities. We have already managed to take one important step forward by getting Northern Rock back out there lending to businesses and households, properly established in the north-east of England.