---

Banking Bill

Perhaps I may pursue this a little further. The Bank of England is effectively acting as a vendor in selling things on. The fact that they have come from a failed bank does not mean that what is being transferred on is a bad asset or collection of assets. If this were a commercial transaction, there would be various provisions in the contract that could include warranties and indemnities, money held back or guarantees. There would be some way of protecting the transferee against recognised uncertainty. If what the Minister is saying is correct, no transferee would want to get involved in any transaction where there was a scintilla of doubt about the ability to complete the transaction, possibly because of the impact of local foreign requirements. I am struggling to understand why the Government are being so dogmatic, or are they effectively saying that they will be unable to get rid of any foreign assets which could, in fact, represent value when taking over a failed institution with an overseas business? Are the Government saying that absolutely nothing could be done and that foreign property is completely at risk? If that is the case, people will be advised by their lawyers not to take part in such a transaction.