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Banking Bill

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend’s amendment. Two uncertainties run through the whole Bill. One is how detailed a definition we may have of financial stability and thus of financial instability. The other is the question of the threshold conditions—what constitutes going over the border of the threshold conditions in Schedule 6 to the Act of 2000? We have pursued both, and will pursue further on Report, the meaning of financial stability and the trigger for the threshold conditions not being met. In these circumstances, the Treasury, by which I might easily mean in current circumstances the Prime Minister and certainly the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will in fact decide. It is quite unreasonable that this should not be recognised and, as my noble friend Lord Stewartby just said, quite unreasonable that it should not be in the Bill.