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Northern Rock

The Chancellor does not really believe all this stuff about restructuring Northern Rock, returning it to the market and giving money to the Northern Rock Foundation. His responsibility is to get the taxpayer off the £100 billion hook that that they are on, so that should be first, second, third and fourth on his list. To that end—this is a genuinely honest inquiry—will he explain something that I do not understand? Why has he chosen nationalisation rather than administration? He said again today that administration would result in a fire sale, but that is not necessarily so; he could quite easily have appointed Mr. Sandler as the administrator to proceed with the policies that he wanted him to pursue. That would have given the Chancellor far greater flexibility. He would not have acquired all the other liabilities of nationalisation that he is now taking on or have had the problem of compensating shareholders. In an administration, they would simply have taken what was left, which would probably have been nothing, whereas he is now going to face endless litigation from what looks like a group of very aggressive hedge funds that are latecomers to this party.