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Banking (Special Provisions) Bill

My Lords, whenever we have controversial Bills such as this there is always some poor blighter in the middle who is catching it in the neck. Today it is the noble Lord the Captain of the Queen’s Bodyguard. Like my noble friend Lord Forsyth, I feel sorry for him. I am sure that all your Lordships will feel a great deal of sympathy because it must be the noble Lord’s saddest day. He is introducing a Bill for the nationalisation of a bank. That has never been done before: no bank has been nationalised in England before. It is a bad thing that that should happen: not even the Labour Party nationalised a bank. One remembers the late 1970s. The question then was: what will the Labour Government nationalise next? The Minister may be too young to remember those days, but one wondered whether it would be the banks, the insurance companies, or the chemical industry? That put the frighteners on the electorate to such a degree that the Labour Party went into opposition for the next 18 months.