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The Economy

The £3 trillion is thanks to the commercial judgment of the relevant banks, to which the Conservative party would give another £50 billion. Attempting to establish control over such expenditure and setting out criteria, procedures, targets and minimum amounts of collateral, constitutes a much more sensible approach. It is as simple as that. Let me deal with the Turner report. I do not have a lot of time left—nor have I read the report in detail—but Turner attempts to deal with the problem of risk management and reward for it in the financial sector. If everything else fails on the wretched problem of Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension, which will not go away, will my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary consider introducing a Budget measure and make clear to him what we would do? That could be done by using a Ways and Means resolution to establish a new class of pension that would be taxed at a much higher rate. The new class would define precisely Sir Fred Goodwin’s position, specifying the age at which the pension would become available, the time at which it would become available and its amount, and spelling out the rate of taxation that would be appropriate. I know all about the problems of hybridity—my right hon. Friend and I well remember the problems that we had in defining a class for the windfall tax, which was very tricky. We could not cover the ROSCOs––the rolling stock leasing companies—or the National Grid Company, which had not been privatised by flotation. I do not know how wide she would want to go, but in this case a class could be established—it could be a class of one person, if necessary—through a Ways and Means resolution in the Budget in such a way as to avoid hybridity. That would not be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but we are trying to crack a very big nut, and it is one that rankles with the public. My right hon. Friend only has to look at how President Obama stood up in the case of AIG—he made it clear that every legal means would be used to bring the great fraud of all those bonuses being paid to order—to see that the issue eats away at people until a boil appears. Until that boil is lanced, it will not go away.