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Banking Bill

I thank the Minister for that helpful reply to my amendments, and I am glad to hear him say that the expert liaison group has been helpful in policy development, which was the intended focus of my amendment. The Minister went to great lengths to say that it would not be proper or practical to involve the Banking Liaison Panel in transfer orders; I completely accept that—it was not the intention of my amendment, nor did I introduce that issue in those terms. However, it was my intention to reflect on what the Minister has said can proceed on a non-statutory basis. My question is: why would the Government not want to enshrine in statute what they have admitted is a valuable process to date, and what they say will be the process to take forward? The banking community suggested this amendment to us to reflect what the Government had said in relation to the expert liaison group, and I am mystified as to why the Minister is sticking to his ““resist”” brief. I need to think about this matter again before Report, and I also have an outstanding amendment which I moved on the previous Committee day relating to the role of the Banking Liaison Panel and the code of practice. We are building up a picture of a rather restricted role being written in for the Banking Liaison Panel, which in practice might be extremely restricted if there are no statutory instruments when the Government are saying something else. I do not think that Bills should be drawn up on that basis. As I said, I shall reflect on that between now and Report, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 31 withdrawn. Amendment 32 not moved. Clause 10 agreed.