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Northern Rock

First, I thank my right hon. Friend and his colleagues on the Treasury Select Committee for the very thorough investigation and piece of work that they did in relation to Northern Rock. Secondly, in relation to the running of the company, it is important that the management team led by Ron Sandler has the opportunity to make its decisions, first, to come up with a business plan, which we need to submit to Europe as part of the state aid approvals process, and then to be allowed to get on with the job. Yet again, I profoundly disagree with what the shadow Chancellor said. He seems to imply that it would be better for the bank to go bust rather than to allow it to trade and get through the difficulties that it presently faces. We will be in some difficulty if we go down the road of holding the management team to account for every single thing that they do. I am sure that the Select Committee will want to know about the business plan and want to discuss these things, but it is important that the management team gets to operate at arm's length from the Government and gets on with running the company, because that is the best way of ensuring that it can be restructured and refocused and can then be returned to the private sector when it is appropriate and right to do so.