House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Feb 1992

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real, lasting, rewarding jobs are employers. I have not heard that word used once in the debate--certainly not by any Opposition Members. Employers--entrepreneurs--will identify market opportunities and make the products to fill them. They will do so at a price that the customer can afford, which will be reflected in the profits of their businesses and the prosperity of their employees.

I have been critical of the Opposition for having no vision of the future. I want to give my right hon. Friend the Minister an idea. He may have noticed within the last 24 hours the comments of the director general of the Institute of Directors, who has, correctly analysed one deficiency in our economy. He has identified a dearth of medium-sized independent companies. That is a weakness of our economy compared with the Japanese and German economies--in other words, the countries which represent our strongest competition.

I commend to my right hon. Friend the importance of encouraging medium- sized independent companies. He should spend some time considering what encouraging such companies would do to the economy. Many criticisms have been made of the economy today because of its short-term view. There are many reasons for that--our tax regime being one of them. I should like to sow in my right hon. Friend's mind the seed that he should do all that he can to encourage medium-sized independent or private businesses because of their ability to introduce stability and a longer-term view of industry into the economy.

All of that is anathema to the Labour party. It is envious and exhibits hatred of successful families and successful businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris) identified that in his splendid speech. He drew the correct conclusion : that the great British public will recognise that fact when they vote in the general election. I too have no doubt that when they make that analysis, they will vote Conservative and return this Government. 9 pm

Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) : I make no apology for raising yet again in the House the plight of the victims of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. I do so because, as the Government are aware, the closure of the bank last year and its subsequent liquidation on 14 January this year have had and will have an effect on the economy. Unless the Government take firm, corrective action in the next few days, some of the depositors and creditors will not be able to continue their normal and basic commercial activities because of what has happened since liquidation. Some of those people are constituents of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury ; indeed, the largest single depositor is a constituent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

As we know, when the bank was put into provisional liquidation, the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi announced that he could no longer keep on staff. Therefore, as of the end of last year, 1,200 people who were in full-time employment in the bank were put on the dole. There was no substantial compensation scheme for them. Many of them have written to me since the closure of the bank to say that despite their best endeavours they have been unable to find jobs. Many have cited comments by the Governor of the Bank of England about the nature of BCCI as the reason why they have been unable to find employment.

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When the bank went into liquidation on 14 January, that was supposed to trigger the deposit protection scheme. Last year, on 8 July, when the Economic Secretary to the Treasury made to the House the statement which the Chancellor could not have made, he said that the closure of the bank would trigger the operation of the scheme, and that those with over £20,000 on deposit would be able to get a maximum of £15,000. That has not materialised.

Since my meeting with the Bank of England a few weeks ago, it has become clear that no payments will be made from the deposit protection fund until the liquidators have circulated a proof of debt form to the 40,000 depositors of BCCI resident in this country. Therefore, the payments of many businesses, which have borrowed over the last seven months in anticipation of getting money under the deposit protection scheme, will have to wait.

A promise was made to the High Court last December that by 14 January the compensation scheme, which was the result of negotiations between the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi and the liquidators, would be published. Despite that promise, the scheme has still not been published, and the anxiety, distress and concern of the thousands of depositors in this country and abroad are obvious. Almost seven months after the bank went into provisional liquidation, they have no means of knowing precisely how much money they will get.

Indeed, a report in The Independent today said that some depositors from Gibraltar, who have lost up to £96 million, have decided to come back to Britain because their money is frozen, they do not have any benefit scheme in Gibraltar and there is no equivalent to the deposit protection scheme there. Their arrival in this country will add to our economic problems.

All this can be sorted out if the Government take corrective action. I should like the Chief Secretary to say that he is prepared on behalf of the Government to write to the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi and the liquidators to ask them when their plan will be published. We have seen newspaper reports that the depositors may get a compensation scheme worth up to $2.2 billion. None of those reports has been corrected or confirmed by the liquidators.

Seven months after the provisional liquidation of the bank, the creditors have still not met to formally agree to the appointment of the liquidators. As the Minister will know, the four liquidators were appointed on 14 January as a result of faxes sent from the official receiver and received at the Department of Trade and Industry at 12.57 on 14 January, and a fax was sent back at 13.09, when the four liquidators were appointed. No creditors meeting has taken place. I do not want to cast aspertions on the character or performance of the four liquidators. I happen to think that both Christopher Morris and Brian Smouhar, the joint provisional liquidators, have acted properly and worked diligently trying to make sure that the negotiations proceed.

The principle here is important : the liquidators have received millions of pounds for their professional fees from this bank. It is only right that the creditors should meet at the earliest opportunity to endorse their actions. I understand that the liquidators are unhappy about such a meeting because they say that it is impossible to circulate 400,000 depositors with notice of a meeting--and that they would have to hire a very large hall if all the creditors turned up. My view is that, if it is possible for companies

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like ICI to circulate their large number of shareholders, it is quite possible for the liquidators to circulate a notice to all the creditors.

It is vital that the liquidators call this meeting so as to be legitimised. Now that the decision rests with the Department of Trade and Industry, and now that the decision has been taken by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to appoint the liquidators, an early intervention is necessary to ensure that such a meeting is held.

It is also important that the liquidators be told of the need to proceed as a matter of urgency with writing to the depositors in this country--those who are protected by the deposit protection scheme--to enable the compensation payments to be made under that scheme. The Bank of England has told me that, on receipt of a certificate from the liquidators, it will make its payments under the deposit protection scheme within three days. The Bank tells me that it has been waiting to make these payments since 22 July last year, when 10, 000 and more claim forms were sent out, but it cannot make the payments because it is still waiting for the certificates from the liquidators.

I know of many business people who cannot proceed and cannot obtain loans from other banks because the deeds forming part of their security are still being held by the old BCCI and the liquidators will not release them. There can be no set-off arrangements unless the compensation plan is discussed.

Knowing the Chief Secretary's constituency interest and the constituency interest of the Chancellor and of other right hon. and hon. Members, I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will tell us that he intends to make an early intervention to ensure that these payments are made.

It has been estimated that the closure of the bank will cost the British economy millions--some say billions--of pounds in lost exports. I believe that the Government have a duty to act now to mitigate that loss.

9.8 pm

Mr. Bryan Gould (Dagenham) : The Secretary of State for the Environment generously promised to give up his dinner in order to listen to my speech, and I see that on that issue at any rate he has been as good as his word. I know what a penance that must have been for him.

The plaudits of Conservative Members must have sounded sweet in his ears, but I suspect that his pleasure was tempered by the reflection that those plaudits were little more than a consolation prize for the manifest failure of those who cheered him today to vote for him a little more than a year ago.

As the right hon. Gentleman engaged in that private conversation with his own Back Benchers, in pursuit no doubt of his own private agenda, what a pity it was that the unemployed, the homeless or the failed business people were not here to hear him ; that there was no one from those who had suffered from the recession present to hear. There would have been few plaudits from any of them, and, in truth, the Secretary of State had literally nothing to say to them. It was clear that the right hon. Gentleman had, in effect, given away the next general election. Otherwise, why fail to address that wider electorate? As I say, he simply

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ignored that audience outside the House. He limited his remarks to that narrower audience on his own Back Benches. It is clear that he has a quite different election in mind and a very different electorate as well.

Although the right hon. Gentleman's speech was hardly relevant to the debate, we are making some progress. Ministers, and even the right hon. Gentleman, no longer deny that we are in recession. They no longer deny that the recession is the worst and deepest for 60 years. They no longer even pretend to discern recovery just around the corner. Even they must now fear the mocking laughter when that hollow claim is made. The green shoots which the Chancellor pretended to identify turned out to be just so much rhubarb.

The Government's only refuge now is in the assertion that our problems are just part of a worldwide recession. There was a time when patriotism was said to be the last refuge of a scoundrel. The scoundrels whom we have to deal with today clearly go further afield in order to seek their comfort. But even that claim is flatly contradicted by the facts and by the more honest of Conservative Members. In case there are those who dispute that statement, I direct their attention to the speech made by the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris).

Britain led the world into recession. We sought it out. It was the deliberate objective of policy. We were first in, we were deepest in, we are hurting worst and we have the least prospect of emerging from that recession. The truth is that our recession is the end product, the inevitable outcome, of 13 years of Tory government. It is a home-grown recession--home-grown in the sense that it was made here in Britain by a British Government, and home-grown in the sense that the homes of the British people have played a major part in creating and sustaining that recession.

No one now doubts, and no one except Ministers now disputes, that the seeds of recession were sown in the mistakes in economic policy in the late 1980s. Those mistakes were described by the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) as ending in tears. I could not have chosen a better phrase myself. In their more honest moments, and because they can find someone convenient to blame, Ministers are sometimes inclined to accept that those mistakes were made and to point the finger at the right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson). That is easy enough now ; it is only a pity that there were so few Conservative Members who were prepared to make that criticism at the time.

Mr. Nelson : The hon. Gentleman spoke about mistakes. Will he confirm to the House his commitment, which I understand the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) has confirmed as a priority, that a Labour Government would renationalise the water companies at a price of some £4 billion? Will he also confirm whether that has been agreed with the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith)?

Mr. Gould : If the hon. Gentleman would care to do his homework--as so few of his hon. Friends are prepared to do--and to read our policy documents, he will see a very clear statement of our intention to restore the essential degree of public accountability to the way in which the water industry operates.

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Let me continue on the subject of the Government's

mistakes--evidently a subject on which there is an element of sensitivity on the Conservative Benches.

Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark (Birmingham, Selly Oak) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gould : No ; I want to make this point.

Not everyone needed the benefit of hindsight, or a convenient scapegoat, to recognise the truth of what was happening to the economy. Some of us knew what was happening ; some of us knew what terrible problems were being stored up.

In October 1988, for example, at the height of the property boom--in the midst of the triumphalism that marked so much of this period--the Chancellor was accused of building, on foundations of supply-side weakness and soaring demand, a house of cards. On that occasion, the speaker warned :

"Those cards are now teetering and trembling and cannot be sustained for much longer. When they collapse, everything will collapse and then we shall discover that the stakes in the game he has been playing have been not chips in some poker game, but real jobs, real living standards and lives."- -[ Official Report, 25 October 1988 ; Vol. 139, c. 256.]

It did not require much prescience for me to make that speech in the House on 28 October 1988 ; but even I could not have foreseen how those initial mistakes--enthusiastically supported at the time, I have no doubt, by the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, now Prime Minister--would be compounded by further mistakes made by the same right hon. Gentleman, first as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister.

How the Prime Minister must regret his complacent assertion that "If it isn't hurting, it isn't working."

It is hurting all right, and it is hurting because the Prime Minister intended it to hurt. The problem is that it is not working--and not only is it not working ; nor are those who are thrown on to the scrap heap day by day and week by week as a result of the very hurt that the Government intended.

Several Hon. Members rose --

Mr. Gould : I am not giving way for the moment.

The recession is home-grown in another sense as well. Homes, houses, the housing market, the construction industry, mortgages, repossessions--all have played a central part, first in the mistakes made by the Government, then in the corrective measures attempted by the Government and now in the hurt sustained as a result of the Government's policies.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gould : Not for the moment ; I have limited time. If I have time, I shall give way later.

House values were the great bellows of the credit boom--fanning the flames of asset inflation, and then using those inflated values to create yet further credit. It was that unstable structure that, inevitably, came crashing down ; and, again, it was the housing market that was the deliberate target of Government policy, and the chosen instrument with which the crash was brought about.

Several Hon. Members rose--

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Mr. Gould : Of course Conservative Members do not want to hear what I am saying, but I invite them to sit down and listen.

Interest rates were raised to record levels ; housing values slumped ; the market fell ; millions were caught in the trap into which they had been lured, and which was then sprung. Their repayments soared at the same time as their assets lost value. In many cases, mortgage debts exceeded the value of the properties on which the loans had been raised. Repossessions mounted ; family budgets were wrecked ; consumer confidence plummeted ; spending stopped ; demand fell ; unemployment soared. Unemployment drove repossessions, and repossessions drove unemployment.

The economy was now in terrifying, dizzying, spiralling free-fall. Still the Government did nothing except, presumably, congratulate themselves that their policies were working. It was certainly hurting. This deliberate wrecking of the private housing market took place-- [Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen can keep up this racket and rabble for as long as they like. I shall make my speech and they will listen.

This deliberate wrecking of the private housing market took place against--

Several Hon. Members rose--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) : Order. The hon. Gentleman who has the floor has made it clear that he is not giving way at present. I call Mr. Gould.

Mr. Marlow : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I make it clear that my hon. Friends have no intention of disturbing or interrupting the hon. Gentleman. We want to ask him some questions and we need some answers.

Mr. Gould : These delays will reduce the time available to the Government spokesman. I have made it clear that for the moment I do not intend to give way, and I would therefore be grateful for an absence of interventions until I am satisfied that I have had enough time to say what I have to say.

This deliberate wrecking of the private housing market took place against the background of the deliberate denial

Mr. Butterfill : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is not it true that the conventions of the House allow an hon. Member to refuse to give way only if he is making his maiden speech? Is the hon. Gentleman claiming that he is making his maiden speech and therefore cannot be interrupted?

Mr. Deputy Speaker : It is a matter for the hon. Member who has the floor. I remind the House that this has been a relatively quiet debate-- [Laughter] --for the past two or three hours and I hope that it will continue that way.

Mr. Gould : I am afraid that Conservative hon. Members are very slow learners. They do not seem to understand that the more they attempt to disrupt a speech, the less likely it is that the speaker will give way.

I was saying that the deliberate wrecking of the private housing market took place against the background of an equally deliberate denial to the construction industry of its other main source of orders in the public sector. Infrastructure contracts dried up and local authorities

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were prevented from using their own money to build houses, with the result that last year virtually no houses were built in the public sector.

Little wonder that the construction industry is now the main engine of recession. It has shed 250,000 jobs at the rate of 1,562 a week since July 1989. Nearly 5,000 firms have gone to the wall. The trade gap in building materials has widened disastrously. The number of housing starts fell by a disastrous 37 per cent. between 1988 and 1991,. Little wonder that an industry which was once counted as the most loyal supporter of the Conservative party has now decided that it has had enough.

Let us listen to what the industry's leaders have to say. Mr. Peter Drew, chair of Taylor Woodrow, said on 4 September 1991 : "We are enduring the worst conditions for over half a century. The impact of high interest rates and a widespread lack of confidence has affected all sections of the company's business."

Mr. Terry Upsall, president of the House-Builders Federation, said on 24 July 1991 :

"Government should be aware that the recession is deepening. There will be no recovery in the housing market until the end of the recession is in sight. Reliance for so long on high interest rates is driving the country into deepening recession, creating unnecessary unemployment."

On 26 July 1991, Sir Clifford Chetwood, chair of Wimpey, said : "I have no doubt that the current recession is the worst this industry has experienced for 40 years. In the UK there are no signs of an upturn and it is hard to see how the tide can turn without a decisive move by the Government to restore confidence."

No wonder that Builder magazine--I quote this with special reference to the question asked by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill)-- began its leading article on 10 January by saying :

"It is not the job of this magazine to tell its readers how to vote, but imagine if construction companies had the franchise--and had to exercise it in the best interests of their shareholders. Their vote would be cast for Labour."

Mr. Beaumont-Dark : I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because I want to ask him one simple question. If we live in a world in which people invest for profit, which is surely a sensible thing to do, how is it that in this knacker's yard of an economy-- [Interruption.] -- that is how the economy has been portrayed by Labour Members today--60 per cent. of all foreign investment in the Common Market comes to this country ? Why does six times more money come to this country than goes to Germany ? Why do people want to invest here--to lose money ? Is it not true that the socialists are more concerned with office and the investors have got it right ?

Mr. Gould : Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would care to ask himself why that investment is not matched by equal investment from domestic sources. My answer to that question is that it is because Ministers make no response to the cry of pain from an industry crucial to our economic recovery.

Do Ministers recognise the need for much-needed public sector investment, as we propose? Of course they do not. Do they accept the futility of forbidding local authorities to spend their own money on desperately needed housing? Of course they do not, notwithstanding the fact that, on page 199 of the book written by the Secretary of State--clearly, he has no worries about

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consistency on such matters--the right hon. Gentleman rejects the current Treasury policy on the issue. Do Ministers acknowledge the damage done by using the construction industry as a sort of political balloon--inflating it irresponsibly and then puncturing it mercilessly?

The Government's answer to all those serious questions of such importance to the construction industry is the same loud raspberry that the Secretary of State blew today--the loud raspberry that the Government have blown at all those who are losing their homes, who are in bed-and-breakfast accommodation or who are sleeping rough on our streets, and at people who have lost their jobs in the construction industry.

That is the response of Ministers who no longer have any concern other than to save their own skins, Ministers who have no greater ambition than to deflect criticism by trading in selective statistics, snide comments, sneak attacks, and--in the case of the Secretary of State--reruns of his bid for the leadership of the Tory party. I shall confer a little accolade, as I am in a generous mood : the high priest in that black art is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. It is he who is deployed to put up a smokescreen to divert attention from Government failures. We know that we cannot look to him for any grasp of the issues, understanding of the problems or compassion for the victims of the Government's recession.

It has always been a puzzle to me what the right hon. and learned Gentleman's precise role in the Cabinet is. Is he there to make the Chancellor of the Exchequer look as if he knows what he is talking about, or to make the Prime Minister seem decisive? Is he there to make the Secretary of State for Education and Science appear polite? Perhaps he is there to convey an image of the Secretary of State for the Environment as a serious politician.

Mr. Butterfill rose --

Mr. Gould : I conclude that the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) is there principally because of his ability to give a good news gloss to any disaster that turns up. Here he is, a man who would have hailed the sinking of the Titanic as a first in underwater exploration. Here is a man who would have greeted the black death as a necessary step towards a leaner and fitter economy. Here is a man who would have celebrated the great fire of London as a vital contribution to urban regeneration. It is no accident that it is he who will wind up the debate for the Government.

The Government could not more clearly signal their intentions to provide no answers to the real issues which matter to millions of our fellow citizens. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's role is as a promising understudy for the Secretary of State for the Environment. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is a trainee Michael Heseltine. What does that tell us about the stature of the Ministers who hide behind the right hon. and learned Gentleman's somewhat insubstantial figure--I speak figuratively of course?

We know that the Chancellor--I am glad that he has joined us--is now regarded as such a liability that he is to be kept out of the public eye at all costs. What of the Prime Minister, who appointed the Chancellor, who landed him with the problems and who now offers him no idea about how to resolve them? We shall truly be able to measure their stature when, after the election, their inadequacies

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can be judged dispassionately, when they are stripped of office, when they are no longer cosseted by civil servants, when they are no longer driven in ministerial cars, and when they are no longer surrounded by red boxes and the other trappings of office. That is when they will be revealed for what they are--bumbling incompetents who are simply not up to the job.

In the meantime, what are the voters to make of that barrage of Tory propaganda to which they are now subjected? That propaganda is directly contradicted by their own personal experience. My advice to those voters is to take courage. I say to the voters, "Open your eyes, look around you and make your own assessment. Stick to your own judgment. Ask yourselves how you find the state of Britain. Ask yourselves whether you see the evidence of recession all around you. Ask yourselves whether you see evidence of people without houses and homes, whether you see people who have lost their jobs, and whether you see businesses that have failed and services that have been run down. Ask yourselves if it is really credible that a Government who have been in power for 13 years can wash their hands of what they have done and disclaim all responsibility for the disaster that has overtaken this country. Above all else, ask yourselves whether this Government, having led us into recession, have any idea of how to get us out of it and whether they show any sign of realising the enormity of what they have done."

The speech by the Secretary of State for the Environment will help enormously in making that judgment. It was a silly and frivolous speech which did not match the gravity of the nation's plight. The right hon. Gentleman may have had his tawdry triumph this afternoon--

Mr. Butterfill : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Earlier in his speech the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) said that he was directing a point directly at me. He has consistently refused to give way since. I do not mind being savaged by New Zealand lamb, but I believe that he should give me the right to reply.

Mr. Speaker : That is not a point of order for me.

Mr. Gould : It is a sign of the desperation on Conservative Benches that that is the third false point of order made by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West in the past 20 minutes. In my book, that is deliberate disruption which does the House no good.

I conclude on the subject on which I was expounding my views to the House-- the pathetic apology for a speech by the Secretary of State for the Environment. The right hon. Gentleman may have had his tawdry triumph on his own Benches, but an impartial judgment will be made by all those outside who will rightly condemn a Government who have destroyed lives and hopes and who recognise no burden on their conscience as a consequence. The electorate will take the chance presented by the next general election, not long delayed now, to recall the Government to their proper responsibilities.

9.34 pm

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. David Mellor) : The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) was in excitable form, but I am not sure that he entirely obscured the fact that once again the Opposition have chosen a day for a debate on the economy and found nothing whatever to say. The hon. Gentleman ribbed me about what might

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be in my speech, but he did not set me an elevated example with a speech that was entirely devoid of any policy commitment. When he was asked a straight question about what one of his junior spokesmen had said was a priority for the Labour party-- renationalisation of the water industry--he ducked the question in a way that would not have done credit to someone in a fifth-form debating society.

The debate has revealed the Labour party's split personality--on the one hand, the conventional speeches of orthodoxy from the Front Bench, but on the other, Back Benchers seething with discontent, as we read in The Guardian today. Hollow unconvincing laughter does not prevent the discontent from showing through.

Then there is the split personality of the hon. Member for Dagenham. He shed crocodile tears about the poor state of the nation while undoubtedly still savouring the £500-a-plate dinner that he had the other night at the Park Lane hotel. If he can deliver that many fat cats to pay that kind of money for the Labour party, he must be doing something right. However, at least that dinner proved that the Leader of the Opposition is capable of learning from his experiences. It is the first dinner that he has ever attended where he opened his mouth only to eat.

Mr. John Smith : Very poor.

Mr. Mellor : The right hon. and learned Gentleman says, "Very poor." Well, he is an expert. I shall try to do better. I am working on it.

The debate was not a triumph for the Labour party, first, because its analysis is incredible to the general public, as is obvious from the opinion polls. The Labour party has failed to acknowledge what everyone knows to be the reality in the world about us. Secondly, the public are much more interested in looking ahead to see what policies are on offer. In no respect do they find the Labour party's policy convincing. Indeed, the Opposition spokesmen cannot even agree what their policy is in crucial areas of spending and taxation. The right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East quoted with approval the Governor of the Bank of England. One is never sure where the Governor of the Bank of England stands with the Labour party. As Disraeli once said, it is never quite sure whether to blacken his character or blacken his boots. Today was a day for blackening his boots so perhaps I might remind the House of what he said in a speech yesterday about the international situation. He said :

"The slowdown in the world economy appears to have spread now to all of the major economies. It has been particularly evident in the United States where, despite the authorities' actions, the recovery which seemed in prospect in early summer appears now to have dissipated. In fact, output appears to have risen hardly at all in the final quarter of the year. Western Germany has also ceased to grow after its post-unification rise in output, while in France and Italy activity has remained weak. Even Japan is experiencing a notable slowing in the pace of GDP growth."--

[ Hon. Members :-- "Boring."] It may be boring but it is the truth-- a truth which the Opposition dare not countenance because the flimsy house of cards which is their policy falls apart once the reality of the situation is known.

Mr. Geoffrey Robinson rose --

Mr. Mellor : I shall not give way. I want to press on.

How can the Opposition deny that Germany is in recession? Today The Times stated :

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