---

Banking Bill

My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lord Stewartby and Lord Eccles for their support of this amendment. I thank the Minister for improving just a little on the endorsement of the tripartite authorities that he gave in Committee. If we keep going on the Bill, he might get to a positive statement about them at some stage. But let us put that on one side. There seem to be two universes. One has the Banking Bill, where the relevant authorities do their own things, which is what my amendment is about, and in the other there are the tripartite authorities, which are supposed to work well together but, as the evidence from Northern Rock showed, did not. We have not had another test; we only ever had one public test, which they failed. My point was about the broader issue of the tripartite authorities and the inability to hold to account anybody other than this collection of bodies. Speaking as a parliamentarian, I am frustrated by that. However, one cannot let one’s frustrations get in the way of letting the Bill go forward. I see the Minister’s point about not compromising the judgments of certain players, but I continue to believe that the co-ordinating aspects of the tripartite authorities are not well reflected in the Bill. I have raised that matter at other points in our deliberations on the Bill, but I will pursue it no further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 2 withdrawn.