Clegg, Heath and Rowen quiz Brown

• [Feb 11]: Nicholas Clegg: SINCE the Queen's Speech a few months ago, the Government have been churning out on average three new announcements each and every day. Will the Prime Minister tell me how many of those initiatives are being put into practice?

Gordon Brown (Prime Minister; Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Labour): As I said a few minutes ago, more than 50,000 companies are benefiting from the measures that we have taken. Those measures include the new enterprise scheme; they include the working capital scheme that is being opened up in the next few days; and they include what we have done with the Inland Revenue and others to help people with the costs that they face at this time. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that we are not only helping businesses in this country, but we are helping people when they become unemployed. In only the past few weeks, we have put in an extra £500 million to help them. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will also see the help that we are giving people with their mortgages, which is designed to keep the problem of mortgage arrears and repossessions down.

• Nicholas Clegg: Let us look at some of the Prime Minister's big announcements. He said that he would get the banks lending again; they are not. He said that he would get tough on bankers' bonuses, yet he is letting them keep millions in bonuses in return for a cynical apology. He said that he would create 100,000 new jobs, yet with unemployment today standing at almost 2 million and rising, our young people of today will be tomorrow's jobless generation. It is bad enough to be a do-nothing party; is it not even worse to be a say-anything, do-nothing Prime Minister?

Gordon Brown: I have tried to explain in recent weeks that the problem with bank lending is actually the loss of foreign banking and non-banking capacity in this country. Half the lending in mortgages and half the lending to businesses came from that source. When that source leaves, as the Irish, American and other banks have left the country or have run down their capacity, the existing banks must do more.

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that the banks in which we have an interest are lending more than they were. The problem is that we must build out of a gap in capacity that existed because of the loss of foreign lending. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will understand that that is what is happening at the moment. We are trying to sign lending agreements with the banks.

As for the right hon. Gentleman's other allegations, if I had taken his advice we would have made the wrong decisions.

• . . David Heath (Somerton & Frome, Liberal Democrat): In response to my right hon. Friend Mr. Clegg, the Prime Minister mentioned housing, but although he announced a mortgage deferral scheme two months ago, it still has not happened. He said that he would protect the low paid, yet council house rents are increasing massively this year. He said that he would increase house building, yet only half as many houses were built last year as the year before. Is this a failure of management, or a failure of leadership?

Gordon Brown: On 1 January, we introduced the new scheme that will help people who are unemployed with their mortgages. That is now working; at 13 weeks, people will get help with their mortgages. We also negotiated with a number of building societies and banks that they will enforce a moratorium on those payments that it is necessary to make in situations where we can avoid repossessions. We are now bringing through the Banking Bill, which is in the House of Commons this week, and it contains the measures that will enable us to go further and provide a better insurance scheme for people who have problems with their mortgages. We have taken the action that is necessary, and we will continue to take whatever action is necessary. The hon. Gentleman should be supporting us, not criticising us.

• . . Paul Rowen (Rochdale, Liberal Democrat): Will the Prime Minister tell the House what steps the Government are taking to ensure that allegations of war crimes in Gaza are investigated by the International Criminal Court? Have the Government asked the Security Council to refer these allegations to the ICC?

Gordon Brown (Prime Minister; Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Labour): The position is, first, that the United Nations Secretary-General has asked for an inquiry into what happened, and particularly into what happened to the UN headquarters in Gaza, and, secondly, the Israeli Government have announced an inquiry into their actions. We must await the results of these inquiries.

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• • The Full Debate