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Banking Bill

The Minister will not be aware that he is entering my favourite time of night for seeking the opinion of the Committee, but I want to put his mind at rest that I shall not be doing so tonight. He has resisted our perfectly reasonable amendments, which were based on the premise that these are political issues which should be in the hands of Parliament and not within the hands of the FSA. I do not think he has really answered that point. In fact, he said that the affirmative procedure would be a barrier. I do not think that the Government of the day have ever found the affirmative procedure to be a significant barrier. The other points he raised were about other matters and not about the deposit protection scheme. But it is the deposit protection scheme about which there is so much interest. I do not have any fundamental problems with leaving the FSA to deal with those aspects of the compensation scheme that are not about deposit protection. But, in the public mind, as we have known over the past year and a half, deposit protection is extremely important and hugely confusing to people, as we first found out around the original definition of partial loss sharing and the lower limit. I do not think that the Minister has answered our points on this issue and I think that we will want to return to it in some form on Report. This probably goes to the heart of one of the most important areas of how the Financial Services Compensation Scheme will work for people, which is an issue for Parliament to determine. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 158 withdrawn. Amendment 158A had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.