Finance (No. 3) Bill

I am of course always happy to abide by your ruling, Mr Gray, so I will move on to focus on the adequacy of the bank levy in the context of other reforms to the wider banking system. It is clear that those other reforms are necessary. We can debate the history at length, and we may take different lessons from that history about the type of regulatory reform that we wish to see, but I want to focus on the adequacy of the levy. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) sought to contrast the payments that bankers would be receiving this year—the million pound-plus bonuses—with the situation of ordinary working families in this country, many of whom are seeing their own financial position severely worsened or are losing their jobs or benefits. He expanded on the modest emoluments that those people would receive this year. However, the force of our argument is not just the contrast between the difficult situation of those people and the greed at the other end of the scale. It comes from the fact that there is a direct causal relationship between the two—the bankers are the ones who have caused the misery that our constituents will be enduring. More than that, the funds from the bank levy—the funds that are being paid in bonuses, from which we would seek to extract more for the Exchequer—could be better spent in tackling the problem in the other dimension. Instead of considering the matter from the point of view of its inequity, we should consider it in the context of achieving a resolution to the deficit crisis. That resolution can come through growth and through the spending of these resources in ways such as my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) explained clearly. We want the Government to accept the amendment, so that we can consider the adequacy of the bank levy in the context of other reforms to the banking system. We want a policy that is for growth in the economy, not simply one that is for taxes.