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The second step is to help the banking system to become stronger, so that it can better deal with the current turmoil in global financial markets. Banks will do that by raising the level of capital that they hold.
A healthy banking system is the cornerstone of the economy. Strong banks underpin a strong economy, but many banks, all over the world, do not have sufficient capital and banks need adequate capital, so that they can keep on lending to people. That is why today the Government have established a bank recapitalisation fund to allow UK banks to increase their capital position. The eight major UK banks have today announced that, in aggregate, they plan to increase their capital by £25 billion. Banks can raise that capital in the open market, in the usual way, or they can raise it through the newly created bank recapitalisation fund. Other eligible banks and building societies can also take part.
Through the fund, the Government stand ready to buy preference shares in the participating banks. Preference shares rank above the stock of ordinary shareholders. The Government will receive a fixed regular payment for holding those shares and will get better protection against any future losses. In addition to that, the fund will be ready to provide at least another £25 billion of capital to strengthen the balance sheets of any interested bank. The taxpayer, therefore, will be fully rewarded for that investment.
Additionally, the Government are also prepared to consider standing behind the issuance of new shares by any bank taking part in the recapitalisation fund. The fund will cover a wide range of financial institutions, from UK-based multinational banks to high street branches and regional building societies. Through those measures, UK banks will be strengthened to above the standards required by international conventions. It will put the banks on a stronger footing, making them better able to deal with future shocks and more willing to lend to people, families and businesses.
That brings me to the third element of the Government's proposal today. The root cause of today's problems is that, because banks all over the world are worried about each other's positions, medium-term lending between them has frozen up. Many banks have simply lost confidence in each other. If banks do not lend to each other, they will also not lend to people and businesses up and down the country.
To free up bank lending and reduce dependence on overnight lending, I want to remove one of the key barriers by offering a temporary underwriting for any eligible new debt issued by banks. That means that participating banks can start having confidence in each other again, because they will know that the Government are standing firmly behind them when they want to issue new debt. That guarantee aims to unblock the system, so that banks can go about their business of lending to people and businesses, and because it will be priced on commercial terms, taxpayers will be rewarded for the risk that they take on. The guarantee is expected to cover an amount of around £250 billion but we will keep this total under review. Over time the cost of lending between banks should fall, reducing the need for such a guarantee.
The freeze in global markets is a problem for all countries. Yesterday, at the meeting of European Finance Ministers, we agreed to work together to rebuild confidence in the banking system. I believe that the measures that I
am announcing today are an important part of that. I shall be having further discussions with Finance Ministers, and when I go to Washington tomorrow I will be discussing with my colleagues there the extension of these proposals, as well as continuing our work towards strengthening the system of international supervision. The Prime Minister, as he has just said in Prime Minister’s questions, has agreed with other major countries on the need for a meeting of Heads of Government.
I believe that these measures are essential for the economy, but let me deal with the implications for the Government and, of course, for the taxpayer of those new proposals as well as others announced on previous occasions. When we nationalised Northern Rock, the Government had lent it around £30 billion. It has now paid back more than half of that ahead of schedule. When we nationalised parts of Bradford & Bingley, it was clear that we would run off its assets in an orderly way and get back as much as possible of the money that we provided to cover depositors. The injections of liquidity through the special liquidity scheme to which I have just referred simply allow banks to swap securities with the Bank of England, so the risk remains with the banks and not the taxpayer; in other words, we get our money back.
For all the operations of the recapitalisation fund announced today, we will be charging the banks on full commercial terms. We will hold a capital stake as part of the investment and that will include a payment of dividends on shares and the appropriate charges for the use of the guarantee ensuring that the taxpayer is appropriately rewarded. The implications for the public finances as a result of today’s announcements will be exceptional and mostly temporary and, in fact, will protect taxpayers by ensuring stability in the economy now.
In return for this offer to invest in banks I will need to be satisfied that the banks have the appropriate policies in place: policies to prevent the irresponsible behaviour that we have seen in some parts of the global banking system. The public are entitled to share in the upside of these proposals, so in return for our support, we will be looking at executive pay, dividend payments and lending practices, particularly to home owners and small and medium-sized enterprises.
I want to say something about the three Icelandic banks; Landsbanki, its UK subsidiary, Heritable, and Kaupthing, which was put into liquidation within the last hour. The Financial Services Authority decided yesterday that Heritable could not continue to meet its obligations and today it has taken exactly the same decision for Kaupthing. I have therefore used the special powers that I have under the Banking (Special Provisions) Act to transfer most of their retail deposits to ING, the Dutch bank, which is working to secure business as usual for its customers to protect its savers’ money. The rest of those Icelandic businesses have been put into administration.
On icesave, we are expecting the Icelandic authorities to put Landsbanki, which owns icesave, into insolvency. Despite the fact that this is a branch of an Icelandic bank, I have in the exceptional circumstances that we see today guaranteed that no depositor loses any money as a result of the closure of icesave and I am taking steps today to freeze the assets of Landsbanki in the UK until the position in Iceland becomes clearer.
Those actions demonstrate my strong commitment to protect UK retail depositors in these exceptional times. The purpose of these proposals is to get lending started again and to get the economy moving forward. It is one of a number of measures that we are taking to deal with specific cases as well as providing general support. We are ready to do more whenever it is necessary. Failure to act would have meant far greater risks to the economy and to the public finances in the future. I have made it clear that we will do whatever it takes to maintain stability, to protect savers and to rebuild the confidence to help businesses, people and the wider economy. I commend this statement to the House.
Mr. George Osborne (Tatton) (Con): I am grateful to the Chancellor not just for his statement, but for discussing it with me this morning.
This has, of course, been another day of turmoil on the financial markets, and people watching us remain desperately anxious about their savings, their mortgages and their future jobs. That is why we continue to offer our constructive support for the package announced today, including the important steps on interbank lending that the Prime Minister mentioned at Prime Minister’s questions. Of course, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) said, the real test of the success of this rescue will be if credit starts flowing again through the veins of the economy. We want to see banks not just lending to banks again, but also lending again to the small businesses that need a loan extension and to the families who are trying to get a remortgage.
So may I ask the Chancellor the following specific questions? He said in his statement that he will require a full commitment to lending to small businesses and home owners. How exactly will that commitment be enforced? Does he have a commitment that the banks, for example, will not be charging small businesses 15 per cent. interest rates of the kind that we described on Monday? Does he have a commitment that the banks will pass on to customers the kind of rate cuts that the Bank of England has just announced today—and, perhaps, will also announce in the future? May I press him again on a question that my right hon. Friend asked of the Prime Minister? Does the Chancellor have a commitment that those banks that are most in trouble and most in need of taxpayer support will not be paying bonuses this year to their senior executives? The Prime Minister did not answer that question clearly and it would be good to have an answer from the Chancellor; there should not be rewards for failure—no bonuses for those who took their banks to the edge of bankruptcy. [Interruption.] Labour Members can ask the new Minister appointed in the House of Lords all about bonuses when they leave the Chamber. The Chancellor says that this is all the Financial Services Authority’s responsibility, but it is the Chancellor who is ultimately responsible for tax money, and how is he going to enforce these commitments, because while the Government can give their support now and strike a deal now, they will, of course, find it very difficult to withdraw that support once it is offered without risking further crisis, so what are the real sanctions that the FSA or the Treasury have to help small businesses?
Secondly, may I ask the Chancellor about the concerns of people with savings in Icelandic banks? They will welcome what the Chancellor says, but may I ask for
some clarification for all our constituents? He says there will be no depositor losses as a result of the closure of icesave. Does that include—I assume it does—deposits of more than £50,000? Does it also include wholesale deposits, because, as I am sure he knows, many local authorities have large deposits with these Icelandic banks? Are their deposits protected as well? Also, where will this money ultimately come from? The FSA compensation scheme will be under considerable strain after the Bradford & Bingley deal. Is the Chancellor expecting, in the end, the industry to make a contribution? May I also ask whether the Chancellor has other plans for other UK deposits in other foreign banks that may be in difficulty at this current time?
Thirdly, will the Chancellor be using this moment to start driving through the longer-term changes we need to our system of regulation? There will be plenty of time to assess the mistakes that have been made and how we got into this situation, but one thing is clear: we must ensure that in future it is the banks and their shareholders who set aside capital, not the taxpayer. The Prime Minister talked in Prime Minister’s questions about the banking Bill and the Bank of England’s role in liquidity supervision, but is he going to consider giving the Bank of England new powers to manage overall debt levels in the economy, with perhaps an open letter system with the FSA?
Finally, may I also ask the Chancellor about the international front? We welcome the news of co-ordinated cuts in interest rates across the western world. He is, of course, travelling tomorrow to the meetings in the United States. What prospect is there of genuine co-ordination across western Governments on other areas of policy, such as support for financial systems, so that we can perhaps have some common approach to the guarantees that are being offered to different parts of those financial systems? On the broader economy, as we have just heard in questions the International Monetary Fund is now predicting negative growth for the UK, the biggest downgrade it has made of any major economy that it monitors.
In the Budget, the Chancellor predicted growth this year of 2 per cent. and 2.5 per cent. next year, and as the Prime Minister very helpfully just confirmed, when he was Chancellor he used the IMF meeting to set out what I think he called a broad pattern of growth, but what I seem to remember being very specific figures—he would often get out his downgrade before the pre-Budget report at the IMF meeting. Will the Chancellor be using this opportunity to predict growth, so that the country is fully prepared and aware of the very difficult economic times that lie ahead?
This is an extraordinary moment, when the British taxpayer is forced to step in and bail out the banking system, but let us be clear: we do this not to rescue the banks or the bankers, but to rescue the economy and the millions of families who depend on it. That will be the true test of whether today’s package succeeds, and we all hope that it does.
Mr. Darling: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support. I am glad that I had the opportunity to speak to him and to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats, earlier this morning and to explain what we were doing and why. I also very much welcome the spirit of cross-party co-operation, and I hope that it lasts.
I shall now deal with the various points that the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) raised, beginning with Iceland. This afternoon, we will publish further details about how the financial services compensation scheme intends to proceed. I have to tell the House that getting information out of Iceland is proving to be quite difficult. That country obviously has severe difficulties, and that is why I decided that I had to intervene. It would have been quite wrong to say to people covered by the Icelandic scheme, “Sorry, you’ve got to go to Reykjavik and try to get your money there.” That is especially true when it is not clear to me whether the Icelandic scheme can be funded. So we have taken steps to freeze the assets of the bank involved, and I hope that we will be able to recover some of those assets in order to offset the money that we will have to provide to help people in the meantime.
The hon. Member for Tatton also asked about regulation. It is important that we learn from what has happened. First and foremost, we need to appreciate that, although it might have been sufficient in days past to allow a country to regulate within its own borders, it is now essential for a country that sees problems occurring within its own borders to discuss them with and report them to other countries. We saw problems in America, when that country was getting into the mire of the sub-prime market, and in the old days, that would have been a problem just for America, but it is now a problem for every country. So I think that the whole culture of and approach to regulation needs to change, and there are obviously developments that we need here—although I am bound to say that no one will convince me that we should go back to the old days when we had nine or 10 regulators in this country who were all tripping over each other. It would also be absolute nonsense to go back to the days of self-regulation. However, I believe that the Bank of England should now have a statutory role in ensuring financial stability—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”]—as I announced in January of this year. I am glad that there is support for that in every part of the House.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the proposals that I announced today. What I have done today is announce the principles that will underpin our approach. As I said, and as the Prime Minister said at Question Time, we will reach individual agreements with the banks concerned. If they choose to use the facilities that we are offering, we shall sit down and discuss the detailed proposals with them.
I am grateful for the Conservative party’s support for our approach to the excesses that we have seen. It is far more interventionist than I had always understood the Conservative position to be, but we must make sure that we go down what is a fine line. We must ensure that the public interest is maintained and yet not get ourselves into a position where we somehow think that we can sit in a boardroom and take all the decisions for everyone. At some point the hon. Member for Tatton came perilously close to suggesting that, but it is important that we make sure that we deal with some of the damaging effects of the bonus system that we have seen over the past few years.
The final point made by the hon. Gentleman had to do with international co-operation. I believe that such co-operation is more urgent now than it has ever been, and that is why I believe that we should remain fully
engaged in the EU, as the obvious place to start is right on our doorstep. I also think that we need to remain engaged and take a lead in making sure that we maintain stability by improving supervision and regulation internationally. That is very much the theme that I shall be pursuing in Washington this weekend.
Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab): I refer to the point made by the Prime Minister that the media have not yet homed in on the Government’s medium-term financial strategy, under which £250 billion is being made available to small and medium-sized enterprises so that they can renew their overdrafts and loans when they mature. That is in addition to the £4 billion from the European Investment Bank and the £200 billion from the Bank of England’s window. Both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have referred to home buyers and small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as to lenders, borrowers and depositors, but not all this country’s taxpayers welcome the measures that have been taken today as being in the interests of the wider community of which we are all beneficiaries.
Mr. Darling: I agree with my hon. Friend. I think that everyone in the House would acknowledge that all of us—whether individuals or small businesses—depend on an efficient and effective banking system. In many ways, in addition to helping banks recapitalise, the key measure today is the one that we are taking to guarantee lending. Unless banks start lending to each other over a wider period, we will merely see the existing problems continue. That measure is very important but, as my hon. Friend said, it is equally important that we see the benefit of that going to small businesses and individuals.
Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham) (LD): My colleague and party leader has already made it very clear that we support these measures as being in the national interest. They strengthen the banks and protect taxpayers’ interests in a very difficult situation. However, the situation is fast moving: I think that the Chancellor is now aware that it has emerged in the past hour or so that eight London councils—and no doubt many others—have large holdings in Landsbanki. That problem will require his immediate attention.
The key question that I wish to pursue in relation to the Chancellor’s statement has to do with how the investment in the banks is to be secured. When the IMF bails out countries, it imposes conditionality. How will the conditionality for the banks be enforced and monitored? How will the Chancellor ensure that the taxpayer’s money going into the banks comes out at the other end, so that he is not in effect pushing on a piece of string? What sort of assurance can workers and companies have that, at the end of the month when salaries and bills have to be paid, the money will be there in the banking system?
Also on conditionality, I have been as stunned as the right hon. Gentleman has been by the sudden conversion of the champions of the bonus culture to advocates of a 1970s-style incomes policy. None the less, the Conservatives are right to say that there must be a fundamental change in banking culture. I hope that that will be carried forward in this programme.
I welcome very much the decision on interest rates, which is all the more powerful for having been done collectively. It represents a recognition that we are not, as the Chancellor said, simply dealing with difficult times. We are also dealing with different times that require a fundamentally different approach from central banks. The key point is that we are moving on from problems in the financial system to problems in the real economy. Ordinary people are going to ask, “If the banks can be bailed out, why can’t we be?” In that context, will the Chancellor speak to the Justice Secretary about introducing new procedures for the courts, to ensure that repossession is the very last resort when people are experiencing serious difficulties with their mortgage payments? That is not the case currently for many of the creditors.
The Chancellor has been able to find £50 billion for the banks, so will he now ensure that the £8 billion that has been approved already for social housing is used rapidly to acquire the land and property that is becoming available at very big discounts, so that it can be made available for affordable housing? That would save many builders’ jobs and prevent the new accumulation of toxic loans in the banking system. I think that we all acknowledge that this is the first and not the last step in what will be a very difficult process of recovery.
Mr. Darling: Again, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he has said. I am very glad that he has welcomed the action taken by the Bank of England to cut interest rates to 4Â1/2 per cent. I hope that he will recall that, when he pressed me two days ago to intervene and take away the Bank of England’s independence, I said that I thought that the remit was adequate to allow it to do what was right—and so it seems to have turned out. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome. I am sure that the whole House and the whole country will welcome the reduction in interest rates, and I hope that banks will ensure that people benefit from it as soon as they can.
I agree that one of the reasons why we put in place today’s intervention is that we need to be mindful of the fact that if we did nothing, the effects would spread into the wider economy. This measure, and others that we have taken and will take in the future, will try to deal with that. The hon. Gentleman referred to our announcement about housing. He is quite right: I want to see that through.
The hon. Gentleman asked about agreements following my announcement today. The Government will obviously have to reach an agreement with individual banks, and those discussions need to take place. He asked what teeth there were. May I give him one example? As he knows, banks in the UK are regulated by the FSA. If it imposes a regulatory requirement—for example, following a code on remuneration, rewards or bonuses—the regulated banks have no alternative but to comply. That is the whole point of a regulatory system.
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