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Banking Bill

I am grateful to those who have spoken to the amendment and I am grateful to the Minister. One thing that my research in the area of company law, which includes banks, has shown since I began it in 1958 is that the owners, as the Minister calls them, are quite incapable of adequately restraining the demands of top executives in our banking and company structures. That has to be approached by adequate regulation. The one area that the Government and others have always refused to put within regulation is the pay and remuneration of those responsible for many of the irresponsible business models that have brought us to the crisis alluded to by my noble friend Lady Turner of Camden. It is quite wrong to say that this Bill is not the place to bring up the problem. This Bill is the place because it is the Bill that is before the House and it is the Bill that is in the public mind. The public, who affect the figures of the opinion polls, will be the first to notice if no explicit mention is made in the Bill of the problem that they know exists and which they know has been part of the problem: people granting to themselves particular rewards for inexplicably absurd and irresponsible behaviour. If my noble friends on the Front Bench and my right honourable and honourable friends in another place want the opinion polls to respond well to this legislation and other legislation like it, they have to put a clause into the Bill explicitly to deal with the problem. I am grateful to the Minister for what he has said about the merits of the amendment and its objectives, but I hope that he will respond more favourably on Report than he has in Committee. Amendment 145 withdrawn. Clause 165 agreed. Amendments 146 to 156 not moved. Clause 166 agreed. Amendment 157 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.