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Westminster News from Paul Waugh
The Waugh Room
News, gossip and insight from PoliticsHome Editor Paul Waugh
Thursday 3rd November 2011 | 11:51
Planning for the worst
The old saw in politics, as in business, is that one ought to 'plan for the best, prepare for the worst'.
Today, City Minister Mark Hoban finally confirmed the unspoken secret in Whitehall: that the Treasury has been wargaming what will happen if the euro collapses.
Tory backbencher Peter Bone, who managed to persuade the Speaker to agree to an Urgent Question, asked Hoban directly whether "the Government have a contingency plan for when the euro collapses".
Hoban replied: "You would expect that every good government would have plans in place for a whole range of eventualities. This Government is well prepared for any eventuality."
Lots of Eurosceps were in the chamber for the Hoban question. In answer to Henry Smith (one of 'the 81'), the minister went further and became the first member of the Government to publicly declare that the single currency was now 'breaking up'.
He replied:
"I don't think there's any intention for us to join the euro at a time when it is breaking up".
(Of course, today is a day for contingency plans. The MoD is clearly working hard behind the scenes on plans by the Americans for military action against Iran. But that's another story.)
What was equally noticeable was Hoban's insistence that the UK was ready to stump up more funds for the IMF.
For all the recent fancy footwork from the Chancellor in insisting that the UK won't be directly funding the euro bailout, it's increasingly clear that the UK will indeed be increasing its liability to the IMF - and that may end up being used to bail out individual European states.
Hoban pointed out that if the UK refused to take part in individual country bailouts it would lose its seat on the IMF board and would become "marginalised".
As for the detail, our current UK maximum lending liability for the IMF is £29bn (out of the IMF total of $950bn). At present, £5bn of UK cash is used for actual lending to countries. Watch it rise...
November 2010
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