Note that despite offering cooperation, the Tories have been snubbed
by Brown's team and have even had private briefings. And their poodle, the BBC, repeats Labour smears.
The Labour Party are playing this crisis for party advantage and
playing it dirty too.
XXXXXXXXXX CS
=======================
BBC ONLINE 14.10.08
Osborne denies leaking bank plan.
George Osborne has denied revealing details of a private briefing
from the Bank of England, days before ministers announced their bank rescue plan.
There were reports the Treasury was angry at the shadow chancellor for backing recapitalisation in a BBC interview a few days before.
But he told MPs that the "prime minister's boot boys" had briefed against him.
Meanwhile, the legislation introduced to deal with the banking crisis
has passed its first Commons hurdle.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling announced
a £50bn plan to kick-start lending between banks before the stock
market opened last Wednesday.
Cross-party support.
But Mr Osborne had called for recapitalisation the previous Sunday,
two days after a meeting with Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King.
Mr Darling later said he had been "rather irritated by the
speculation started on Sunday" adding he wanted to announce the plan
"when the time was right".
In a debate on the legislation introduced to deal with the banking
crisis on Tuesday, Labour MP Mark Todd asked Mr Osborne for
assurances he had not given away details of the meeting with Mr King.
Mr Osborne replied: "Number 10 has been briefing against me for the
last week while we have been trying to offer some cross-party support
for what the prime minister has been doing.
"Let me make it absolutely clear: I did not take, nor did my
colleagues on the front bench take, any private briefing from the
Bank of England and go and repeat it on any television programme or
in any newspaper article."
He said the possibility of recapitalisation had been "discussed
openly in the press for some time" and that IMF head Dominique
Strauss-Kahn had suggested it as an approach.
He added: "The idea that this was not being discussed across the
world is somewhat bizarre."
New powers.
He said it was "simply not the case" he had repeated a private briefing.
"I give the House that assurance - not that that will stop, I
suspect, the prime minister's boot boys doing their job."
He also said he supported the rescue plan during the debate on the
Banking Bill, which was given an unopposed second reading later on
Tuesday and will now go for detailed scrutiny at committee stage.
The bill gives the Bank of England a statutory duty to promote
financial stability, and improve protection for depositors and
creates new powers to deal with failing banks by quickly transferring
them to another private sector buyer or into temporary public ownership.
They need to become law by next February, when special powers
introduced after last year's run on Northern Rock expire.
Mr Darling told MPs without the powers he could not have dealt with
more recent problems such as the collapse of Icelandic banks.
The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have said they will
support the government to get the measures onto the statute book.
But the Conservative former chancellor Ken Clarke said it was likely
a future government would have to look again at the measures adding
he believed there were "serious problems" with the bill but the
Conservatives would support it "because there is a pistol pointing at
the nation's head".
For the Lib Dems, Vince Cable said it was "surreal" the bill was
being debated while the economic storm was still going on. [Eh?-cs]
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