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Banking Bill

The noble Baroness seeks to pre-empt me, but I am not going down that path. I was merely giving background to the fact that it looks as if there is a discrepancy so I will indicate the nature of the difference between the two positions. I was establishing that we needed precision in the clause, which is the issue that takes legislative primacy. That will be the law of the land, not the clause heading. The heading is there for signpost purposes. The phrasing is drawn widely to ensure that a range of transfers is possible, subject to the need to meet the public interest. For example, a healthy deposit taker in which the Government are a shareholder may be in a position to take on the business of a failing bank, or the commercial operation of a foreign state may be prepared to do the same. We would not want Clause 11 to prohibit that, so it refers to a ““commercial purchaser”” to take account of situations in which the transferee may not be totally private-owned. I hope that the Committee will recognise that the clause uses the heading ““Private sector purchaser”” rather than ““commercial purchaser”” for that sole reason. It is an issue not of discrepancy but of identifying what the clause is about and then being precise in the way in which it is meant to reach its objectives. Its objectives must be wider than might be suggested if we talked only in terms of a commercial purchaser.