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Banking (Special Provisions) Bill

I have now had questions from both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) about that. Let us be clear that the purpose of clause 12 is to ensure that the Treasury has the power to make consequential and supplementary provisions, given the complexities of the financial system and of the way in which the banking system works. We need to be able to ensure, if particular consequences follow through later when more detailed considerations are looked into, that they can be dealt with. It is clearly not the intention that people who should rightly take responsibility for their decisions should be exempt from doing so. Nor is it the intention to disapply any appropriate laws—be they European or UK laws—that should apply in these circumstances. This is simply about ensuring that we have the consequential powers that we need to implement the intention of the Bill, which is exactly what we have been discussing throughout the debate today. As hon. Members will know, the global credit crunch is continuing. That means that banks are still not lending to each other in the normal way, and that is why the Government guarantees are still in place. Given that they are in place, it is right that we should expect an appropriate return for them, and that is why we have done the detailed assessment and chosen temporary public sector ownership as the appropriate way forward. Interestingly, one thing that has come out of today's debate is the fact that hon. Members who at the time of the intervention in the autumn supported both the introduction of Government guarantees and the intervention to prevent Northern Rock from going under are now arguing that those guarantees should be removed and that the bank should be put into administration. Throughout the different stages of today's debate, a number of Conservative Members have said that they cannot accept the very principle of a bank continuing to have Government support, yet operating in the marketplace, despite the particular, unusual and difficult conditions that apply and despite the fact that the Financial Services Authority has emphasised the good loan book and the solvency of the bank.