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Banking Bill

I support the position which my noble friend on the Front Bench has taken. I argued at Second Reading that one of a series of important characteristics of the financial system is its continuous innovation and change. Indeed, the problems of instability that now affect the financial system have not come purely from the banks but from failures of other institutions and counterparties in elaborate chains of market relationships that go outwith the banking sector but that impose themselves on it. A precise definition of financial instability would fail to take account of the process of innovation that is characteristic of the system as a whole, so leaving the definition rather more open, as my noble friend has suggested, is the best course in these circumstances.