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Youth Unemployment and Bank Bonuses

I am going to make some progress now. As the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills outlined today, we will also take the tough decisions to tackle excessive executive pay. At a time when millions of workers face a pay freeze or worse, and when many businesses are confronting a difficult trading environment, the highest-paid cannot be disconnected from reality. That is why the Secretary of State announced new measures to drive through greater transparency on executive pay, to empower shareholders to deliver responsible pay, and to reform remuneration committees to break the old boys club. It is for that same reason that the Government are leading efforts, domestically and internationally, to reform our banking sector fundamentally in order to protect our competitiveness while safeguarding our stability. We are abolishing the tripartite system of regulation that failed so dramatically in the run-up to the last crisis, and putting the Bank of England in charge of both micro and macro financial supervision. We are reforming the sector itself, as recommended by the Independent Commission on Banking, to safeguard the UK's position as host to a world-class financial services sector without putting UK taxpayers at risk. We have implemented a permanent bank levy to ensure that banks make a fair contribution to tackling the deficit, reflecting the risks that they pose to the system while encouraging them to move away from riskier models of funding. As we announced in the autumn statement, we have increased the levy from 1 January this year to ensure that it yields at least £2.5 billion a year, which is more than the amount yielded by the previous Government's one-off tax on bonuses—a tax that"““failed to change the industry's behaviour over pay””." Those are not my words, but those of the previous Chancellor, who was responsible for the policy in the first place. Through the Financial Services Authority's remuneration code, we have ensured that bonuses are deferred over at least three years, and linked to the performance of the employee and the firm. Through the disclosure regime, we have provided more transparency than ever on pay. And while the previous Government managed to get only four of the top 15 banks to sign up to the code of practice on taxation for banks that was introduced in 2009, we have ensured that all are signed up. Our expectations of the banking sector are clear: banks should make a full and fair contribution. They must respect the spirit, not just the letter, of the law, and make a commitment not to use artificial schemes to avoid tax. The new Bank of England Financial Policy Committee, established as a result of this Government's reforms, has warned that in these turbulent times it is capital levels, not bonus payments, that have to be the priority. Did the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) want to intervene?