28 Sep Parliament should not be recalled over market movements, says John Redwood MP
CONSERVATIVE MP John Redwood has said that Parliament should not be recalled to discuss currency fluctuations.
He was addressing concerns about silence from Government ministers about the fall in the value of the currency against the US dollar.
Asked if MPs should be recalled, he told GB News: “I don’t think that’s a very fair call…I don’t think there’s anything the government should say about the state of the pound.
“It’s building this idea that every time the value of the pound goes down, that is a crisis where ministers have to make some statement.
“I don’t think they should make a statement every time the pound goes down. For every day it goes down there will probably be a day when it goes up.
“What normally happens is the short sellers of the currency get away with it and make some money for a bit, and then they overdo it and then they lose quite a lot of money because the pound suddenly bounces.”
In an interview with GB News, he said: “They did give those reassurances in a very important way last Friday…
“What they said on Friday to all of us was reassuring, because it said that they understood the pain people were going through and the difficulties business faced from very high energy prices, so they were going to spend quite a bit of money on capping the energy prices before they get to even crazier levels.
“And they offered various ways of ensuring that people have a bit more money back in their bank accounts and their purses and wallets to face some of these big bills through the one off payments that have been announced as well to pensioners and people on benefits.”
He added: “I don’t think there’s any point in the Government trying to run a commentary on people who want to short British bonds or short the pound and it’s not in the power of the Government to control the value of the pound.
“They shouldn’t try to. The last time we tried to do that, as a matter of policy, it gave us a very nasty boom and bust and everybody agreed after that episode with the European Exchange Rate Mechanism we shouldn’t be targeting the pound.
“The Bank of England may wish to make statements and indeed it has just made a statement. I thought it was quite wrong with the bank to be deciding to sell bonds when they were already very low in price and have been sold off by bond traders.”
Mr Redwood said: “I’m very pleased that they said they’re not going to be doing that for the next week or two and we’ll have to see what else they want to do, but if anybody has to help with interest rates, it is the Bank of England.
“And it’s not just the short term interest rates, which they have the unique power to fix. They also have a substantial influence over the longer term rates which affect your life, families, mortgages.
“That’s what they are saying they’re going to do today and I think that is welcome.”
