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Northern Rock

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for offering to let me reconsider what I said to the noble Lord, Lord Lawson. As I indicated in the Statement, there will be an independent evaluation of the bank’s value and, therefore, of what is owed to shareholders. As the Statement also makes clear, the valuation will be stripped of the essential public moneys that have gone in to support the bank. It will be a valuation of the bank as it stood as an asset at that time. That money will be paid as and when it falls due. That is a separate issue from the long-running position of the bank. I heard what the noble Lord has said again about irresponsible lending by Northern Rock, but the bank’s current operation is consistent with that of other banks. He quoted some exceedingly limited figures. As I indicated in a previous answer on this question, some borrowers are inevitably better risks than others, and will therefore get more favourable treatment. However, the bank is currently operating pretty consistently with any other bank in the market and I do not accept his point that the bank is stretching its position beyond that. I do recognise that the noble Lord and the House have the right to understand fully how the bank will be managed in future, and we will have time to extensively discuss those issues during the Bill’s passage. If the Bill is cleared by the Commons tomorrow, we hope to introduce it in this House on Wednesday. We will have time to go through these issues in more detail then.