John Redwood’s contribution to the Banking Bill

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): This is the biggest, most important and most dramatic money resolution I have ever seen in the House of Commons. It has taken 1,000 years to amass a debt that the Government put at around Ā£550 billion. Under this money resolution and the associated actions that the Government might take, they might double the debt by making that amount of money available as loans and share capital to banks or put the same amount again at risk through their loan guarantee scheme. As my hon. Friends have indicated, if we consolidate on the general balance sheet, as we should, all the assets and liabilities of the banks that the Government are buying, we do not just double the debt but quadruple or even quintuple it when one takes into account the full size of RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingleyā€”no others, we trust, but this is very open-ended and implies that there could be others.

The money resolution takes the form of two different assertions. First, we are invited to give the Secretary of State power to put out money provided by Parliament under these headings, and secondly, in urgent cases, to authorise payments to be made out of the Consolidated Fund. The Bill that backs up the money resolution contains even more wide-ranging powers relating to the central bank, enabling quite a lot of money to be generated by the bank through quantitative easing and the manoeuvres of its own balance sheets, so the process is literally open-ended. We have absolutely no idea how much is involved.

I was disappointed because I wanted to intervene on the Economic Secretary. He gave the impression of a Minister who was going to make a serious and sensible statement about this weighty issue, but he sat down as soon as he saw me trying to intervene and before he had mentioned a single figure. Call me old-fashioned, but if I were moving a money resolution in the House of Commons, even one for a modest sum of money, I would mention the sum involved and explain why I thought it would provide good value. We have a money resolution that could involve half a trillion or a trillion pounds. On a consolidated basis, if we take all the liabilities into account, it could be several trillion. We might think that it was worth giving a few numbers, or at least some kind of ceiling to suggest that the Government understand that we are talking about big banks in a relatively small country.

Mr. Newmark: Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that the Government do not know the answer because they have not had the time to do their own due diligence on the exact amount of risk to which they are exposing the country and taxpayers? That is why we are now on our second bail-out, and my concern is that we may end up having a third two or three months down the road.

Mr. Redwood: I quite agree. I do not know whether the figure of Ā£37 billion is retrospective, or whether the Economic Secretary thinks it was voted for under some other provision. We know, however, that Ā£37 billion of equity capital was put into banks just a few months ago. The money changed hands only comparatively recently because it took quite a long time to get the approvals and do the final detailed negotiation. In the case of RBS, we believe that Ā£20 billion went in one week, and the following week it announced it had lost the lot and a bit more besides. Again, call me old-fashioned, but I do not feel I got a lot of value out of that Ā£20 billion, and I wonder why the Government put it in, in the way they did, why they did not ask a few questions about the future results before they chose a price to put in new share capital, or why they put in new share capital at all, instead of using guarantees and short-term cash loans, which would have been quite sufficient.

Sir Peter Viggers (Gosport) (Con): To give a sense of perspective about the size of the amounts involved and the speed with which figures can change, on 13 October the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us that the assessment made on the money going into the banks at that point was a cautious oneā€”the FSA had made it on a cautious basisā€”so the amounts involved were rather larger than might otherwise have been the case. Three months later, on 19 January, RBS had to write off Ā£28 billion, which is the largest amount ever written off by a company.

Mr. Redwood: That is right, and some of us have urged the Government in the past to show a little more concern for the public money involved, to ask more questions and do a little of what is called due diligence in the private sector before committing such huge sums of money to get a better deal for the taxpayer, if they feel that they need to do such a deal at all.

I urge the Economic Secretary, when considering the money resolution, to ensure that next timeā€”I fear that there will be a next time because the Government are looking at a second package of banking support measuresā€”the Government at the very least try to find out the scope of the problem. They should ask what the next set of figures might be. They should take that into account before valuing any share capital or loan capital they intend to put into the bank, and they should understand that a medium-sized country with an annual turnover and national income of Ā£1.5 trillion will find it difficult to stand behind all the London-based banks with their combined multi-trillion-pound balance sheets.

If the Government are not careful, they will undermine the credibility and the reputation of their own debt and public finance by linking themselves too strongly and closely to some large banks, three of which we know have been badly run and have committed themselves to big risks and to big bonus and other contingent payments for no good reason, which have landed the taxpayer with a very big bill owing to the Governmentā€™s policy.

I know that others wish to speak. It is a pity that we do not have a three-hour debate on the biggest sum of money ever voted on in the history of Parliament, but I do not want to detract from colleaguesā€™ time. I have made my main points: the Government should show more care, they should provide us with some numbers and they should understand that the total sum involved is too big.

6 Comments

  1. oldrightie
    February 11, 2009

    A refreshing sight to observe genuine and informed debate but this does not suit Government spin meisters, whose only care is for soundbite politics and sod The Country.

  2. Mark Wadsworth
    February 11, 2009

    Call me old fashioned as well! Banks can be fixed by debt-for-equity swaps, demergers, by setting up New Good Banks and turning the old ones into closed funds etc etc. (click link for summary) anything has got to be better than bail-outs.

  3. Harry Fredericks
    February 11, 2009

    Mr Redwood. I would not offer any more money to the banks. Not a penny. Not even a farthing (I rather liked farthings). This is not proper government, surely that is obvious to all. We have here a Government that likely colluded in the massive debt build up. In any event a German economic team that carried out an investigation on Gords’ Golden economic miracle the year before pointed out that it was more of an economic “Mirage” than a “Miracle”. The same team put the debt figure at 1.3 trillion. So it was in the open, yet no action was taken. We now learn that Gords’ bosom buddy Sir James Corby was warned of the risks being taken. Once again no action taken beyond sacking the upstart that dared to raise the alarm.

    I put it to you that is in no wise Incompetence. It is something else. Conspiracy?… Quite possibly so.

    Either way the BoE must be taken into public ownership. There is no argument extant any longer to give credence to the argument that having the BoE in private hands is beneficial.

    It would be a wonderful idea to enact the “Monetary Reform Act”.

    REPLY The Bank of England is in public ownership

    The times of a few individuals enjoying endless wealth on the backs of productive workers is past. End the National Debt crisis, which forces nations into eternally paying interest on debt without ever gaining solvency. Operating has benefits only for the Bankers and the insiders.

  4. THE ESSEX BOYS
    February 11, 2009

    After the revelations about Sir James it seems the PM’s aversion to due diligence extends to key advisors as well as behemoth banks!

    With more and deeper incompetence coming to light every week we can well see why Harry above thinks that ‘incompetence’ might in fact be ‘conspiracy’.

    As a wise ol’ fella in the pub said to us the other day..

    “If all this fiddling and deviousness is stuff we know about, just think of what’s going on that we’ll never find out!”

  5. Rob N
    February 12, 2009

    John,

    Here’s some more information to use that elaborates on the Governments current plans and how bad it could turn out.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/2/how-not-to-trigger-great-depressions

  6. mike stallard
    February 13, 2009

    Do you ever feel like Cicero?
    He was a man who believed passionately in the Roman Republic. He fought tooth and nail for it. Of course, as we know now, he was out of his time: the Republic was doomed and had been so for a century.
    I reckon that if David Cameron cannot restore the “Public Thing” that we too are pretty well doomed to an eternity of Labour/EU Socialist dictatorship, incompetence and sleaze with no way of ever getting rid of the professionals in charge and no way of checking up or controlling their merry antics.
    Meanwhile, as Winston Churchill is meant to have said, please do keep b*****ing on!

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