UK Parliament / Open data

Finance (No. 2) Bill

All the financial plans of that shadow Government would have been about fiscal prudence, and the context would have been completely different. The Labour Government crashed the economy on every single front, which is why we are where we are today.

There is one final point I want to make. We had a wide-ranging discussion earlier about Marxism, which I thought particularly intriguing. We have to decide, as a country, whether we want to be a flourishing free enterprise economy or a centrally commanded one in which everything remains in, or is taken into, the public sector. When the banks were nationalised, they were bailed out on the basis of rescuing the economy from an extreme threat that could have left us resorting to barter. The point is that we have put the banks on a stable footing so that they can flourish again and become competitive businesses.

The bank levy, to me, is about striking a balance but having a competitive financial services sector to drive our exports and growth, and that is why I will be voting to support it.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
633 cc835-6 
Session
2017-19
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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