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Banking Bill

My Lords, the draft code goes a long way to support the points just made by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, because in paragraph 17 it states that, "““the Authorities must make public statements explaining how they have acted in regard to the special resolution objectives; and … how they have balanced the objectives””." But paragraph 18 states: "““It should be noted that it will not be possible to divulge certain information, for example information the release of which would threaten financial stability or confidence in the banking system””." Paragraph 18 could be used to nullify paragraph 17 without any difficulty. I draw attention to a different point in relation to transparency, which of course is one of the original criteria that led to the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and the setting up of the FSA, which has a duty to be transparent. In the Bill and in our discussions, we constantly come across the issue of confidence in the banking system. Indeed, in Davos on Saturday, the Prime Minister repeated the need for the re-creation of confidence in the banking system. But that is putting the cart before the horse because the problem is to re-create confidence within the banking system. Because of the £50,000 deposit guarantee, the public are probably willing to await the outcome of the mountain-of-debt crisis, but the bankers do not know how to deal with it and have almost entirely lost their confidence.