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Landsbanki Freezing Order 2008

My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Myners, to his new responsibilities. We are fortunate to have in the House the benefit of his tremendous commercial and financial experience. I trust that this debate will have given him some taste of the breadth of the area over which your Lordships’ House roves. On a single order, we have had discussions about the euro, cod fishing, security and banking regulation. The Minister’s task is formidable. I wish to make only one point. I support the remarks of my noble friend Lady Noakes about the inadvisability of mixing anti-terrorism legislation with banking or financial regulation legislation. When legislation is introduced under the overriding banner threat of terrorism, it is not appropriate for it to be used for general financial regulation, any more than it is appropriate for it to be used for ejecting octogenarians from Labour Party conferences or for householders to be placed under surveillance for not recycling their waste properly. The House gives tremendous authority to the Government when they bring in such wide-ranging anti-terrorism powers, which should be as narrowly drawn and as narrowly used as possible. The consequence if that does not happen is that assurances given by Ministers are later called into question and it becomes more difficult for the Government to win support for future national security legislation. I quite understand that Section 4 in Part 2 of the 2001 Act makes specific provision to allow this type of order to be made. I do not think that the House takes issue with that. The question is whether that legislative settlement is really appropriate. One has only to look at the questions and concerns that were raised at the time of the making of the order, including in Iceland. I have much sympathy with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. For another friendly Government to be brought under the auspices of this legislation and for action to be taken against them under an Act that deals with anti-terrorism, crime and security cannot be right, when what we are dealing with here is the regulation of banking institutions. I strongly support my noble friend’s common-sense argument that these powers need to sit in a dedicated banking Act and not within an anti-terrorism Act. If that happened, the noble Lord would no longer have to come to the House and defend this complex and inappropriate legislative settlement.