In any circumstance it is hard to justify, but more so given the money comes from people struggling with compulsive gambling, this is an industry body needing tighter regulation. We have started high-stake gaming machines. We now need to move into online gambling, and curbing the advertising around it.

Vince Cable

Categorized in : World

Our workforce is very co-operative, very flexible, easy to work with and one of the big selling points. The idea that Britain is still back in the labour market of the '70s is utterly bizarre.

Vince Cable

selling easy ideas

Regulators are a backstop: they don't own banks. The governance at the top of our leading banks has been shown to be lamentably weak. No one at the top of Barclays will take responsibility for systemic abuse.

Vince Cable

abuse responsibility weak

The economy has become seriously unbalanced. Its growth has not been driven by investment or by overcoming Britain's long-standing weaknesses in investment and productivity, particularly skills. Instead, there has been a binge of debt-financed consumer spending.

Vince Cable

growth skills long

Much of the shadow banking sector, a major contributor to the economic crisis, was also only possible because of taxhaven secrecy.

Vince Cable

economic banking shadow

Taxes shouldn't be higher; they should be fairer. We must be a party that's disciplined. We must make tough choices.

Vince Cable

tough party choices

The real problem at the moment is that the banks - because of their existing culture, which is frankly anti-business, obsession with short-term trading profits, not focusing on the long term - are throttling the recovery of British industry.

Vince Cable

recovery real long

Quite apart from the problem of the vote, it's bad for the image of Parliament that people take the trouble to come up and are not allowed to see their MP.

Vince Cable

mps vote people

The House has noticed the Prime Minister's remarkable transformation in the past few weeks, from Stalin to Mr. Bean.

Vince Cable

transformation house past

There was, of course, a global financial crisis. But our Labour predecessors left Britain exceptionally vulnerable and damaged: more personal debt than any other major economy; a dangerously inflated property bubble; and a bloated banking sector behaving as masters, not the servants of the people.

Vince Cable

banking-crisis debt people

When Gordon Brown becomes prime minister, the balance sheet that reflects his economic stewardship could look very sickly indeed. He could become Labour's biggest liability, not its most marketable asset.

Vince Cable

stewardship balance looks

The two policies that Ken Clarke is most famous for are his opposition to the Iraq war and being a very defensible and quite courageous pro-European. These are both policies he shares with us.

Vince Cable

iraq war two

You can't win with some people. If you're not in government, you're criticised for being not serious. If you are in government, you're criticised for wanting power. That's the Labour party's line of attack, and it's a bit ridiculous.

Vince Cable

party government winning

Fundamental renegotiation is very, very unlikely to produce any significant change

Vince Cable

unlikely significant-change fundamentals

The Tories are now the party of rural areas and Labour essentially is in the big cities

Vince Cable

rural-areas party cities

My college, Fitzwilliam, was pretty good but unfashionable and I lived in digs so I was not part of the cloistered 'old college' environment, which frankly was a bit intimidating. But I worked hard and settled in by exploring politics and girls.

Vince Cable

environment girl college

Many of our problems are home-grown. Gordon Brown regularly advised the rest of the world to follow his British model of growth. But the model was flawed. It led to the highest level of household debt in relation to income in the world.

Vince Cable

income growth home

According to the papers, I'm miserable, alienated, and on the brink of resignation. But that's simply not where I am.

Vince Cable

resignation miserable paper

Small- and medium-sized businesses need access to a diverse range of finance options, including non-bank lending. These new forms of finance are still small in scale today but they should, over time, bring additional choice and greater competition to the lending market.

Vince Cable

competition choices needs

On banks, I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer. There is much public anger about banks and it is well deserved.

Vince Cable

crow apology anger

Well, as I said, you know the issue of Greek debt, they've grasped the principle of debt reduction. I think most people would argue that probably more needs to be done on that front, and they've just begun to take the first steps to accepting that there's going to have to be much closer economic integration in Europe.

Vince Cable

issues europe thinking