CompaniesSep 23 2014

Miliband: We must break up the big banks

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Ed Miliband, Labour party leader outlined six goals for Britain for 2025, one of them including a pledge which promised a “reform of the banks”, at today’s Labour Party Conference.

Speaking in Manchester, Mr Miliband said today (23 September): “The British people can’t afford another five years of David Cameron.”

The first of the national goals was to halve the number of people in low pay by 2025; “transforming the lives of 2m people in our country”. Mr Miliband said that the minimum wage would rise by £1.50 an hour by 2020, which would represent a rise in pay by more than £3,000 a year.

Following on from this first goal, Mr Miliband’s second goal is that “all working people should share fairly in the growing wealth of the country - that means as the economy grows the wages of every day working people grow at the same time.”

“This used to be taken for granted in our country,” he added.

However, for this to be achieved this “means reforming the banks; much bigger reform of the banks”, Mr Miliband said, and it means “breaking up the big banks so we have the competition we need in the banking system”.

“It means getting the power out of Whitehall - we are far to centralised a country.”

Mr Miliband added that we need to “take the power out of Whitehall into to our businesses, towns, and cities so that they can create the jobs the prosperity the wealth that they need”.

Elsewhere, he made a housing pledge in the fifth of his national goals.

Mr Miliband said: “By 2025 for the first time in 50 years this country will be building as many homes as we need - doubling the number of first time buyers in the country; creating over half a million of new homes.”

Mr Miliband also pledged that housing would be a top priority for capital in the next parliament.

In 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised a 20 per cent increase in the country’s house-building programme, claiming 3 million homes would be built by 2020.