David Cameron says Economic recovery is frustratingly slow

UK's Cameron Says Economic Recovery Is Frustratingly Slow

                                                                                                              By Isabela Marques from the wall street journal and the guardian.

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron Wednesday said Britain's slow economic recovery was frustrating and reiterated his promise to put government support behind boosting house-building and infrastructure projects.

Speaking in Mexico following the meeting of leaders and finance ministers from the Group of 20 leading and developing economies, Mr. Cameron said the coalition government was determined to stick to it's plan to tackle the deficit, saying the country couldn't go a spending and borrowing spree.

"But what we can do is use the fact that because of the credibility we have got and the record low interest rates, we can make sure we pass those low interest rates on to businesses and homeowners, [and] make sure we go ahead with infrastructure that will help our economy and get houses built in Britain again," he said.

"That is taking place, but I accept that it is frustrating, it is too slow and people want it to go faster and so do I," Mr. Cameron said.

Mr. Cameron and other senior government ministers such as Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and Business Secretary Vince Cable have all said in recent weeks that the Treasury is looking at ways of using the strength of the U.K.'s public sector balance sheet to underwrite investment in infrastructure projects and housing. An announcement is expected in the next few weeks.

He told Sky News the UK was facing difficult times and said it was important not to talk the country down, pointing to measures being discussed at the Tory party conference to help boost growth in the private sector.

"The growth has to come from the private sector in our economy. We can't go on growing the government, we need jobs to come from private business. We have to make it easier for people to start businesses, to grow businesses and to expand and employ people."
He added: "Even if you take the period since the election … it has involved difficulty for family budgets, but there are 300,000 more private sector jobs. We have seen big growth in exports for instance – 40% up to China. What we now need to do is build on that and make it go further and faster."

Earlier in the day, Cameron hit out at proposals by Ed Miliband to introduce differential tax rates for good and bad businesses, saying that was a point at which his financial ideas went "off the rails".
The prime minister made his comments after being asked about the Labour leader's keynote speech in Liverpool last week. Miliband called for an end to the "something for nothing" culture and promised to regulate and tax companies according to whether they invested for the long term or went for the fast buck.

Cameron told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the call for an end to the "something for nothing" culture was something he had been encouraging for the past five years as Tory leader. He agreed that the state had a role in setting the right rules to encourage moral behaviour, citing the coalition's welfare reforms.

But he dismissed the suggestion of applying different tax rates for different businesses according to how they behave.
"Where I think Ed goes off the rails is the idea that the chancellor of the exchequer can sit there and say there is one tax rate for this company and another tax rate for that company," he said.
"It is completely impractical – and that is why the business response to the Labour conference was so negative, because they thought: 'Heavens above, we are trying to grow an economy and get more people working and we need investment and jobs. What on earth is this guy talking about?'"
Cameron insisted business ethics and behaviour had improved a huge amount. "What used to be a fringe concern about corporate social responsibility is now absolutely mainstream, and businesses and people really care about it," he said.

Asked about excesses at the top, Cameron said he did not believe the government should intervene to stop bonuses or put a cap on pay in the banking sector.
"On the question of bonuses, if there is a bank entirely in the private sector, I want to see responsible behaviour and I want to see us regulating properly – but we can't determine the pay structure in every single organisation. That wouldn't be the right thing to do," he said.
He said the government was following its mantra that "we are all in this together" in paying down the deficit and said he wanted to build an economy that works for everyone.
"I don't accept this is a government that has one rule at the top and one rule at the bottom," he said.
"We are absolutely asking people at the top of our society to be responsible and we are completely dissatisfied about the way the banking industry behaved over the last decade."
In a separate interview with Radio 5 Live, Cameron backed his chancellor's stance on tax policing.
"I thought it was a very powerful bit of George Osborne's speech yesterday when he said: 'To rich people and also rich companies that are avoiding tax, we will come after you and get the money' … we are changing the rules and cracking down on tax evasion. Then we are getting people to obey the rules. We have just done a tax treaty with Switzerland."

As Osborne flies out to Luxembourg to meet EU finance ministers, Cameron said it was good that Britain was outside the euro but there was a real need to help the eurozone get its act together, citing the export business on which Britain depends.
The eurozone crisis was holding back the entire world economy, Britain included, he said, arguing for further integration to ensure the countries with the single currency worked more closely together.
He said those countries outside the euro, like Britain, would need certain safeguards to make sure what the eurozone countries are agreeing separatelydid not adversely affect the single market.
"This is not some naïve view [that] they go off on their own and we sit back intensely relaxed about it," he added. "There are safeguards we will need."
The third day of the Tory conference will feature speeches from the home secretary, Theresa May, the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, and the immigration minister, Damian Green.
May will tell the conference that immigration laws will be toughened to prevent foreign criminals using human rights arguments to escape deportation from the UK.
In an announcement likely to delight delegates, she will blame lax laws for a number of controversial cases in which courts have ruled that killers and rapists could remain in Britain.

"You get released on a convention that we can't resile from and we shouldn't resile from. We wouldn't expect British citizens to have their rights ignored in Greece, or any other part of Europe, and we shouldn't expect the same here."

Their right to a family life – enshrined in the Human Rights Act – has too often been put before the need to control immigration and protect the public, she will say.
May is expected to reiterate her wish to see the Human Rights Act scrapped. While the future of the legislation remains under review, actions such as hardening the immigration rules would help end what Cameron this week called the "chilling culture" the legislation fosters.
But a Liberal Democrat activist present at the Tory conference said May's attempts to prevent misuse of the act was an empty gesture as the right to family life was based on a convention from Brussels, not London.
Evan Harris, a former MP, told Sky: "It's not that it really means anything, but no one is allowed to say that here.
"You get released on a convention that we can't resile from and we shouldn't resile from. We wouldn't expect British citizens to have their rights ignored in Greece, or any other part of Europe, and we shouldn't expect the same here."