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Banking Bill

I am grateful to the Chancellor for giving way. One area of disagreement has been about who pulls the trigger on the special resolution regime. As he knows, we think that the Bank of England should have that power, and so too does the Governor of the Bank of England. Did the Governor not in effect demonstrate that he had the de facto power to do that when he prevented Bradford & Bingley from accessing the special liquidity scheme and therefore forced the rest of the tripartite committee to deal with a bank rescue situation? No doubt there was consultation, but he nevertheless had that power. If the Bank of England has that de facto power, would it not be better to put it formally in the Bill, so that it can be properly considered by Parliament?