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Northern Rock

The hon. Gentleman will have to explain how the bank managed to expand its business so rapidly in the earlier part of this year. The question I have been asking throughout is a ““what if”” question. We do not know the answer to it in reality, but it is an important question. What if the property market were to crash? I ask that because for some years before I came to this House, I worked in the oil industry. The question that was always asked by my prudent managers was, ““What if the oil price were to fall drastically? What would then happen to our profits and our company?”” Because they were always asking that question, they always hedged, diversified and prepared, and they saved themselves in difficult periods. What is amazing about this episode is that nobody at the top of the bank, nobody in the Financial Services Authority and none of the clever double-firsts in the Treasury ever seemed to have asked this basic question: what would happen to the value of these mortgages and of domestic property if the market fell heavily?