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Banking Bill

I should like to comment on Amendment 204. In order to save time, I shall also speak briefly to our Amendment 208, which would have the same effect. The noble Baroness has laid out a number of reasons why the Bill in certain respects raises as many questions as it answers. It contains sweeping powers. We have talked about a number of those today. We talked, for example, about the powers in Clause 225, and other clauses also introduce sweeping powers, which, had we not been operating in haste and in the middle of a financial blizzard, would almost certainly not have got into legislation in their current form. My concern about the noble Baroness’s amendment is simply that you can have an independent person doing a review, but having people doing reviews, as we have seen with jolly old Equitable Life, does not necessarily mean that any action flows from them, however damning they are about the way that something is operated. Amendment 208 puts a stronger requirement on the Government because it requires them not only in effect to have a review but to justify the Act, as it will be, in its entirety after a three-year period. Parliament would then have a cast-iron opportunity, just as we have now, to debate the issues because the Banking (Special Provisions) Act had a life of only a year. It will give Parliament an opportunity to discuss the many and various issues about which we have ongoing concerns and which the noble Baroness raised. As I said, my concern with her amendment is that, in a sense, it is too weak to ensure that Parliament has a chance to examine all these items in great detail. I realise that ours is a nuclear weapon of an amendment in comparison but I would rather that the balance was on that side than the other.