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Banking Bill

The hon. Gentleman raises an important but different point about the social exclusion agenda and whether it is right to require banks to operate in that way. As I understand the policy that he describes, it applied to all banks, not to some rather than others. Among the institutions that will be looking nervously at how the nationalised banks operate are the mutuals such as the Nationwide, which can never be accused of being greedy bankers. They do not have shareholders, they have been moderate and they have built up a market share responsibly, but they will now have to compete with state institutions. The ground rules under which the system operates will become extremely important. Like the Chancellor, I anticipate the important discussion about bank regulation that we will need to have. Rather earlier, we will probably need to return to consider how nationalised banks will function in this hybrid system.