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Banking Bill

My Lords, I wonder with some temerity whether, at this late stage of the legislation, the House and the Government might consider some modest constitutional innovation to deal with the conundrum raised by the amendments. The Government’s case, as I understand it, is that if, late at night in the last knockings of doing some deal, a provision is found in some law that prevents the deal from being done and is not important in its own right, the parties concerned need to be able to get on and do the deal and put it to bed. I understand that. However, if this were corporate governance and it was too difficult to call up Parliament and the whole board, perhaps provision could be made for this by giving power to a sub-committee to take actions on behalf of the board when things need to done quickly and subsequently ratified. We have no such provision in the constitution, but it would not be impossible to make provision in the Bill for the exercise of this power to be subject to scrutiny by some cross-party Standing Committee of this House, the other House or both Houses, or by a group of privy counsellors or some other innovation. This would simply ensure that there was a constitutional check on the exercise of this power where it was unrealistic for Parliament to be recalled. It would then be possible for that group to decide whether the power was being properly used and whether Parliament should be recalled to debate it if necessary. I know that it is unusual to make constitutional innovations in the course of a Bill, but I simply wonder whether this situation might require some creative thinking.