YouSaid · the spoken record
Jon Trickett
On the record 2018–2026
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This is everything the corpus holds for Jon Trickett. It is not everything they have said on the record.
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“The Secretary of State is probably aware of the statement made yesterday by the Secretary-General of the United Nations that multinational corporations are making ecosystems into “playthings of profit”. The Secretary of State has prayed in aid the inspector’s report, and I accept what the inspector has said. However, the Secretary of State provides the framework for the Planning Inspectorate, so will he not now at least say that he will review the whole of our planning framework to try to protect wildlife, ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as the green belt?”
House of Commons8 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Has the Minister considered that, given that the regulations effectively empower ARB to control admission to the profession? Regulatory capture is a major problem, as almost all our regulators have been captured by the professions that they are meant to regulate. As I say, the consultation of 8 June led to the order. In that consultation, the Government proposed two options, neither of which has been adopted in the statutory instrument before us. Was there a further round of consultation? If so, it does not seem to have been conducted publicly. If there was, will the Minister draw our attention to it and say why nobody else was consulted, other than ARB, which seems to be a flawed institution?”
House of Commons7 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is the body that the regulations will empower to make decisions with respect to other jurisdictions. A lot of theoretical work is being done on regulatory captures. Regulators tend to be captured by the institutions that they are meant to regulate. In this case, it is clear that ARB is dominated by architects. I have looked at the work it has done over the last couple of days, and ARB is focused on developing the profession, rather than regulating it. That will inevitably be the case if members of the board are architects or people who work closely with architects. Is ARB, in its present form, an appropriate body to regulate the profession, given the mistakes that the architectural profession has made over the years?”
House of Commons7 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“A consultation was held by the ARB, and I note that RIBA said that it was concerned that what was being discussed by the ARB would result in “a highly prescriptive, inflexible and expensive system, parallel to the RIBA’s internationally recognised validation programme.” How do the Government intend to tackle the problem of there being two separate institutional frameworks that decide how people become architects and gain admission to the profession of architect? That seems to me quite an important matter. Let me reflect on RIBA and the ARB. They are overwhelmingly white. I think I found only one person on the board who is a person of colour. There are nine members of the board of the ARB, and six of them are either architects or connected directly to the construction industry.”
House of Commons7 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What is not referred to is the Royal Institute of British Architects, which my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North mentioned in passing. RIBA is established by royal charter, and it plays a role, alongside the ARB, in accrediting architectural schools in the UK. It therefore helps people to gain admission to the architects register. Why has RIBA not been consulted, as apparently it has not, according to the note? RIBA is a distinguished body that was set up by the Crown.”
House of Commons7 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is a significant implication, so it is right that the Government introduce legislation, and the regulations are based on the Professional Qualifications Act 2022. The preamble to the note we have says that the Government consulted only the ARB, which is the regulator, but I have done some research and sought advice from the Library. There was a consultation by the Government, dated 8 June 2021, and the consultation says that the Government consulted a wide range of bodies, including UK-based architects, internationally qualified architects, schools and students. I will not read out the whole list. Why do the regulations say that the Government have spoken only to the regulator, when the consultation was much wider? I do not understand why the regulations would make such a statement.”
House of Commons7 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“After all, we meet in the shadow of not only Brexit, but Grenfell, and many Members will probably have in their constituencies architect-designed estates that are not fit for purpose, although people have to live on them. That has been a disaster. System build construction from the ’70s, ’60s and before was all designed by architects, so any decisions on how the architectural profession is regulated and monitored and how people are admitted to the profession of architect have a public impact. The regulations provide a new framework to allow people to access the profession. Some architects are local, but many are international and operate internationally, so let me reflect on the consequences of Brexit for architects who either trained abroad but work in our country, or trained in the UK but provide services in America or elsewhere.”
House of Commons7 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for North Ayrshire and Arran, who said that the good old days were before the Brexit vote, but the way in which the Government embarked on Brexit has proven a disaster. I do not want to say that the regulations are shoddy, because that would be disrespectful to a Minister who probably was not in post when they were drafted, but they are not a brilliant piece of work. The preliminary note on the regulations says that the Secretary of State consulted the Architects Registration Board, which is the regulator for the architectural profession, and the explanatory memorandum says that the Government have not carried out an impact assessment because there is no impact from the regulations. Those two things are mistaken.”
House of Commons7 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Robertson. I want to make a couple of points. First, I am perhaps the only Member of Parliament who worked as a manual worker for quite a number of years in the building industry. I therefore came to know architects and the architectural profession well. I will try to keep private my prejudices given those experiences, rather than sharing them with the Committee, but I have strong views about the nature of the building industry, construction, the role of architects and so on. We have discussed the impact of the Brexit vote on a number of matters, and today it is on the architectural profession. I do not entirely share the views of the hon.”
House of Commons7 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does the Minister not accept that there is a wider public interest beyond the profession in how it is regulated, given his references to Grenfell and my points about architect-led system building, which was a disaster? Why has he failed to consult the wider public, and why did he consult only the architect profession?”
House of Commons7 December 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My second point—I know that you will listen to me carefully, Mrs Murray, and tell me if I am out of order—is that moving from the system we have is that probably no Mayor in the country will ever be elected with more than 50% of the vote. If we look at the 2019 North of Tyne mayoral election—I will develop the point in a second to show why it is relevant to today’s proceedings—Jamie Driscoll, who is an excellent Labour Mayor, was elected on a 32% turnout. However, in the first round he received only 33% of the vote, which means that only 10% of the electorate voted for him. One would imagine that that is what will happen under first past the post: a person with executive duties, making decisions about the nature of a region, will have been elected by only one in 10 voters.”
House of Commons30 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Why are we applying the lessons of a referendum about one system of voting to a completely different system of voting and saying that people have expressed a view? They have not expressed a view on SV, because they were never asked. The truth is that, as the explanatory memorandum says, no consultation took place with the public at all. The Government decided not to bother. The Conservative party used to be the party that would protect and conserve the constitution. What the Conservatives are doing here is playing around with the constitution in a number of ways. I will come to my second point in a moment, but first I ask the Minister why that paragraph is praying in aid a referendum about one voting system to argue that we do not need to consult on a completely different voting system.”
House of Commons30 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They consulted the Electoral Commission—full stop. They did no further consultation at all, and we can identify fairly easily from the explanatory memorandum why they did not. Another reason, of course, is the politics of all this, which are always interesting. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North exposed some of that. Some of the arguments developed in the explanatory memorandum are difficult for the Government to sustain. I want to probe why, in paragraph 10.3, whoever it was who wrote the explanatory memorandum on behalf of the Government says, “Well, we had a referendum, and people decided they did not want a change from first past the post.” However, the referendum was about the alternative vote—a different kind of proportional representation from SV, which is in place for the mayoralties.”
House of Commons30 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am pleased to serve under your leadership of the Committee, Mrs Murray. I rise briefly to raise a couple of points about the provisions. These are quite ingenious ways of moving from one system of voting to another, and the details are extremely complicated to follow. However, there are helpful explanatory memorandums for each of the provisions, and I went to those to try to understand the details of the various measures that are being changed. I was particularly interested in the consultation process, which does not seem to have taken place. The explanatory memorandum to the Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (Amendment) Order 2022 says that there is a statutory duty to consult under paragraph 12(4) of schedule 5B to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. What did the Government do?”
House of Commons30 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Let me just make the second point, and then the hon. Gentleman can come in. I am not looking only at Labour Mayors; Andy Street in the West Midlands received 48% of the vote on a 31% turnout, but the truth is that, of the total number of people who might have voted, only 15% voted for him— [ Interruption. ] Has the hon. Member for Bolsover been told by his Whip not to intervene on me?”
House of Commons30 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the Government stopped this system of Mayors who simply operate with delegated powers and administrate decisions made by central Government, and if those Mayors were given real powers, we might get more engagement with the public and might not have to tinker with the electoral system.”
House of Commons30 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That cannot be a justifiable reason for changing the way we do things without consulting anybody in the country. I have major reservations about this. I remain to be convinced of the case for moving away from first past the post in parliamentary elections. Once we establish a system for setting up and electing what are effectively neo-presidential authorities, having tinkered with the British constitution, we should not change that system without at least speaking to the public. If we spoke to them, perhaps we would end up with more engagement. My final point is not at all in the documents before us—you will probably rule me out of order, Mrs Murray.”
House of Commons30 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is quite an issue, and it needed to be properly debated with the public. We are back to the failure to consult the public. Why on earth did we not consult the public? Why on earth have we allowed a situation in which only one in 10 voters might vote for an elected Mayor, who will have executive decision-making powers of a kind that the Prime Minister does not have? Certainly, under the normal system of council governance, a council leader would not have those powers. That is quite a mistake. In paragraph 12.3 of the explanatory memorandum, under the heading “Impact”, we find out that we can save money by moving from one system to another, but are we really going to put a price on democracy? The memorandum says that we will save £7.3 million by moving from one system to another.”
House of Commons30 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will come to precisely that point. I was the leader of a great council—Leeds City Council—for almost 10 years under Mrs Thatcher and then under John Major’s premiership. I was elected under first past the post, but we had a parliamentary system, as we do here. The Prime Minister is not elected by the people; he or she is elected by parliamentarians, and it was the same with the council. I was elected as leader of the council by the councillors, who had been elected by the public. What we have here is a presidential mode of running local regions and councils, in the sense that we have directly elected Mayors—who are not really accountable to a council or a group of councillors and who are able to make executive decisions of some significance, often spending large amounts of money—elected by only 10% of the population.”
House of Commons30 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Is it not clear that slack management in the Department led to get-rich elements of the British ruling establishment taking money from the NHS at a time of national crisis? Their watchword was “greed” rather than “public service”. Where is the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock)—I have notified him of my intention to mention him—who was in charge of the NHS when all this was going on? Is he still in Australia getting his £400,000 for eating unspeakable parts of the anatomy of various beasties?”
House of Commons24 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Everybody in the House knows that the reason the Bill on Monday has been changed is that the Government cannot deliver a majority for their top-down, random house building targets to be imposed on various local councils. May I make a helpful suggestion to the Leader of the House? Why not have a debate about house building and how we deliver our targets without damaging local democracy? That would test the views of the House and give me a chance to oppose a 3,000-house development in south Featherstone, which will do massive damage to the community and the local environment.”
House of Commons24 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I was council leader in Leeds, one of the great cities of the country. We had resources to begin to make a difference, although not enough—we always needed more; council leaders will always say that—but local authorities no longer have the resources to deliver the kind of levelling-up agenda the Government say they want. We see that in every single service—buses, trains, education, feeding people who are hungry. Funding for all those areas has been cut. There was a discussion earlier in the debate about literacy. My constituency has some of the worst educational attainment figures in the country, and school funding has been cut by 40% during this Government’s time in office. We cannot level up on peanuts or simply by changing structures; we have to will the means as well.”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“He was doing the design at work in my constituency but he had to put the computer in the back of the car and drive it home so that he could access the internet in the evening. That is not acceptable. As for telephones, in my house I cannot use a mobile phone. What I want is a discussion not about my constituency, but about everyone who lives in left-behind or held-back communities up and down our country. The talk of levelling up in the Bill gave them hope. Everybody has clocked those words, but they have also clocked something else: the Government have not willed the means to change what has happened to so many communities, which are locked out of the so-called prosperity of our country. I feel very angry about this, and I am very disappointed with this Bill. My final point is on local government.”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Something drastic needs to be done about it, which is not in the Bill. Another point that is in the White Paper but not the Bill is digital exclusion. The White Paper states that digital exclusion and social exclusion go together. Of course they do, but here is the fact. In my constituency, there is no easy way to move around without a car—using cars is not a great thing anyway for the planet—but the download speed in my village is 46 megabits per second. The average for the UK is 86. We have people running businesses in the constituency who cannot move to a job somewhere, and it is not working. I met a guy—an ex-miner—who had won this wonderful contract to provide design solutions for the New York stock exchange. Guess what?”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is not acceptable. There are 24,000 people in my constituency—I raise my constituency to illustrate a broader point—without access to a car. I asked how many people use a bus or a train. Out of the whole constituency, only 3,900 people use either a bus or a train, yet there are 24,000 people without a car. The buses stop early in the evening and start later in the morning. Lloyds bank tell me that of the 650 seats in our country, people in mine rank 621st for how likely we are to use public transport, through our credit or debit cards or however we pay. That is not acceptable. Will the Minister accept that something has gone radically wrong with our public transport system that in a constituency such as mine with no social mobility at all, people are imprisoned in villages with no work and no public transport?”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are 533 on the list, so only four seats have less mobility than mine. What does that mean? A child born in poverty today in my constituency will almost certainly die in poverty—there is no social mobility unless we do something dramatic—and younger than children being born elsewhere. That is not acceptable. Social mobility is about education and all sorts of other things, but there are two things I want to focus on briefly. One is transport. In a village that has no work any more—remember that the villages were built around coal mines, which have all gone—it is very difficult to find work. People have to move from one place to another, but the way in which we organise our public transport system is not helpful. I met a woman who walks in the dark for an hour from one village to another to work, and then back in the dark at night.”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the Bill does not allow the House to discuss the objectives we are trying to achieve, there must be proper scrutiny of the matter in the House of Commons. The amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) raise the question of outcomes, rather than process. She wants to see young people—in fact, all our people—fed. The Bill does not allow for that, because we are dealing with structures rather than outcomes. I want to illustrate this with two further points that are in the mission statements in the White Paper, but not in the Bill. They relate to bus transportation, which the Minister referred to, and another point. I will talk about them quickly, because there is not a lot of time. My constituency is the 529th least socially mobile constituency in England.”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Bill is full of constitutional changes, structural changes and processes, but it does not specify the outcomes. Part 1 refers to the mission statements that will be produced, but there is no reference in the Bill to what those mission statements will contain. However, the White Paper has a helpful indication of what the mission statements, which the Minister will eventually organise, will contain. She needs to tell the House what her intentions are in relation to the mission statements, because there is nothing in the Bill. Clause 1 talks about the mission statements being “laid before each House of Parliament”. Does that mean there will be a vote? Will the mission statements be amendable? Laying them before the House might mean putting them in the Library, which is simply not acceptable.”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Notwithstanding that, parish and town councils in my area are the ones feeding the hungry and, now, opening up warm places for elderly people and families to go to, because of the cost of energy. They are the ones doing the levelling up. When there was a problem with people leaving their home because of covid, who arranged for people in my village to knock on doors to offer to go to the Co-op? It was the town and parish councils. They organised the churches, the voluntary sector and all the other bodies in the village. I represent 23 ex-mining villages, and it happened everywhere in my constituency. Why are we distributing power away from the centre in a top-down, uniform, homogenous way that is convenient only to the men and women in Westminster, rather than to the communities we represent, which are so different in character?”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). This debate has illustrated a central defect in the Bill, to which I will return when I address clause 1. People going hungry is clearly a product of 10 to 12 years of austerity and deepening division in our society. Somebody needs to get a grip on this. I represent 23 ex-mining villages in the heart of England, in Yorkshire. Cornwall is a very special place, but Yorkshire is God’s own county. The county of the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) may have a special constitutional role, but Yorkshire has a divine role. It is interesting that the Bill has no vision for what parish and town councils can do.”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Why would someone not speak up for local communities against a Government making mistaken decisions? Why on earth should that be a bad thing?”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister is making an interesting speech. I hope in due course she will come to the question that I raised about powers for parish and town councils.”
House of Commons23 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In the communiqué from the G20, the words “food”, “food supply” and “food scarcity” are mentioned 54 times. It is good that Britain is taking part in the global community’s fight to make sure that food is properly distributed, but last year, before the Ukraine war, one in nine Britons were driven to use a food bank. Is it not clear that the problem was not disruption of food supply but poverty—poverty driven by No. 10 and No. 11 when the Prime Minister was in the Treasury? Is it not clear that for the poor of Britain, hunger is a nightmare created by Downing Street?”
House of Commons17 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Given the scale of what is about to happen to our planet, every single one of us must do what we can to alleviate the problems that we are facing, but the richest 1% of people on our planet are responsible for the same amount of global emissions as the poorest 50%. Does the Prime Minister accept that, unless we tackle the issues of social justice, we will not resolve the problems of climate change, and was he comfortable that one of the worst polluters on the planet, Coca-Cola, sponsored the recent meeting of COP?”
House of Commons9 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is that cap that the Government appear to now be intent on removing. I want to use this short debate to ask three questions. First, how much is remuneration for bankers now, 14 years after the crash? Secondly, who is suggesting that the bankers’ cap be removed and why? Thirdly, how do we justify an ethos of greed as a determining factor guiding so many decision makers in a strategically important sector of the British economy?”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It questioned whether Turner’s response was strong enough and whether “the Financial Services Authority has attached sufficient priority to tackling remuneration in the City.” As we know, although bankers played a major role in bringing the system to its knees, in the immediate aftermath of the crash no banker was charged with any offence, in spite of their reckless behaviour. Many people in the country, in my constituency and elsewhere—perhaps in yours, Mrs Cummins—thought that at least some of them should have served time at Her Majesty’s pleasure. It was the European Union that eventually instituted control of bankers’ bonuses. The EU said that no banker should receive a bonus of more than 100% of their salary—though where that figure came from I do not know—or 200% if shareholders had voted in agreement.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When it came time to review how the crash happened, a significant part of it was attributed to the reckless culture of greed in the banking sector, which had exposed the banks to unacceptable levels of risk. Adair Turner, the then chair of the Financial Services Authority, said that “inappropriate incentive structures played a role in encouraging behaviour which contributed to the financial crisis”. He is hardly a man of the left, and therefore I think his words might be regarded as authoritative. In 2009, the all-party Treasury Committee returned to the question of remuneration. It said that remuneration in the banking industry had played a role in causing the banking crisis.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Following the change in Chancellor and then in Prime Minister, almost the whole of that mini-Budget disappeared, except for one thing: the idea that we should lift or remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses. I hope that the Minister will be able to change Government policy this afternoon, following my persuasion, but we will see what he says. We have been here before on the question of bankers’ bonuses. I want quickly to recall what happened in the 2008 banking crash. As it happened, I was working in Downing Street at the time and saw clearly that we were on an economic precipice, in part because bankers’ remuneration had been allowed to let rip. The crash almost brought down our whole economic system.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the Government policy on bankers’ bonuses. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mrs Cummins. It is good to hear somebody from the old West Riding, as we would call it, in charge of the sitting this afternoon. I look forward to fair but firm chairpersonship. It was the great German playwright Bertolt Brecht who once said that, to make money from banking, set up a bank rather than rob one. People make more money that way. It is clear that there needs to be a wider debate about the role of the financial sector in the British economy, but it is good to start with the remuneration structures in the finance sector. That is what this debate is about. The previous Chancellor’s deplorable mini-Budget, as I would insist it is called, contained a series of clearly mistaken policy shifts.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Given the rates of remuneration I have just indicated, it would take a colossal amount of unrestricted greed for bosses in the banking sector to propose such a thing. However, according to The Guardian , sources in some of the City’s largest banks are saying, “Not me, guv. I didn’t ask for the cap to be raised.” Those bankers admitted that they were baffled by the then Chancellor’s plan, and I think that they are equally baffled by the current Chancellor’s decision to continue with the plan to lift the EU-imposed cap. The bankers said that they had not lobbied for the move, so it begins to look like this was an ideological move by the Conservative Government, who believe as a matter of faith in rewarding the super-rich with additional wealth.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Seven out of 10 of all the bankers who made more than €1 million in the whole of Europe are located in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, 27 bankers in the UK were paid more than €10 million in a year. Two UK-based asset managers received between €38 million and €39 million in a year—I think that clearly makes the point referred to by my hon. Friend—and at the top of the pops, one merchant banker was paid €64.8 million in a single year, and almost all of that was a bonus. Those are absolutely outrageous figures. They make me wonder why the Government feel it is necessary to lift the bonus cap at all, given the outrageous sums that are being paid. That brings me to my second question, which was an attempt to discover who is actually pressing for a lifting of the cap on bonuses.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I agree with every point she made and I will develop some of those arguments as I speak. First, I will address the question of where we are now with remuneration in the banking sector. We know quite a lot about it. The chief executive officer and chief financial officer of Britain’s largest bank, HSBC, were paid $2.2 million and $1.3 million, respectively, for 2021. The truth is that bankers’ bonuses have doubled in spite of the cap since the 2008 financial crash. According to the most recently available data, there are 3,500 bankers working in our country who made more than €1 million—£880,000—in a single year. That information comes from the European Banking Authority.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“First, they should immediately announce that they will not lift the cap on bonuses. Secondly, they should appoint an independent commission to examine the whole remuneration structure in the UK, starting with the financial sector. Thirdly, they should make an interim announcement that there will be a suspension of all bonus payments in the City during the current financial crisis, until the independent commission that I have recommended reports.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Code of Conduct for Members states: “Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might influence them in the performance of their official duties.” I quote that because 10% of all MPs have disclosed in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that they have monetary ties with for-profit companies or individuals in the financial sector. The same is true of one fifth of all peers. I worry about how embedded the financial sector is in this very building. Financial institutions and individuals closely tied to the banking and finance sector donated a total of £15.3 million to political parties throughout 2020 and 2021. Returning to bankers’ bonuses, the Government need to take three steps.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“How can they justify the multimillion remuneration packages for a handful of people at the top when the number of food banks for working communities is growing? In any event, it seems that avarice in the financial sector is simply piling up the material for the next crash, which will come if we do not change direction fast. The Government need to abandon this policy. That is just plain Yorkshire common sense. I want to make one further point, and I will be careful how I express it—the House will understand why.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Turning to my third question, there is no evidence to suggest that individualised reward systems for key decision makers are necessarily for the corporate good of the institution for which they work, let alone the common good of the country as a whole. An argument that the Government have developed is that if banks pay more bonuses, they will attract more bankers who will pay more tax. A better argument would be to pay those who are on the lowest pay more money because they will spend it in the local economy and contribute to income for the Treasury. A Government who set out public policy to raise the incomes of the wealthiest while holding down the wages and salaries of working people are totally at variance with the values of the overwhelming majority of people in this country.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Lady makes a number of important points, and I agree with most of them. I was asking whether the Government are ideologically committed to this policy, since no banker is prepared to admit that they had lobbied for it. If that is the case, and it looks like it is, there is not a single shred of empirical evidence that money can trickle down from the most wealthy to the rest of society—quite the reverse. Beyond a certain point, it has been argued that the further growth of the finance sector hampers rather than supports the real economy. One study estimated that the excessive size of the UK’s financial sector may well have cost our economy £4.5 trillion in lost growth over a 20-year period.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Surely the banks and the financial sector should work for the common good, rather than for the private interests of a handful of very wealthy people. I will now make way for the Minister, and I look forward to him attempting to defend the indefensible.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend has caught my next point. In the interest of social justice, the country feels that a 2% cap on the salaries of public sector employees and the lifting of the cap on already over-remunerated bankers is the wrong way for the Government to go. I agree with the statement made last week by the former deputy governor of the Bank of England, who my hon. Friend has just referred to. He said: “The British government should raid the banks for tens of billions of pounds to fill a black hole in the public finances”. He argued that the combination of rising interest rates and the money printed as part of quantitative easing has handed banks windfall profits. Those profits are going towards increased bonuses, which is totally unacceptable.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does the Minister accept that I am not speaking on behalf of my Front-Bench colleagues? I am speaking about the views of my constituents and others across the country, and in the interests of what I believe the country should be doing. The Government are clearly wrong, whatever those on the two Front Benches are proposing.”
House of Commons8 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗