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Banking Bill

My Lords, I am a little disappointed that the Minister has once again waved his shroud. Every time an objection is made to the structure of the clause, we seem to be told that the whole financial system will collapse into ruins unless we can do without Parliament. Subsection (8) says in effect that the Treasury, if it thinks it necessary, can make any order that it likes and Parliament can do nothing about it. Parliament can disapprove of the order later, but by that time everything would be done and dusted, so why would we be asked back even to consider it? We could simply have a Motion to discuss the financial system of this country; it would have no more or less power than we have under the clause. The Minister got close to illuminating the position under Clause 75, particularly its retrospective aspects, when he made the point that you might find that you had ignored some detailed provision about regulatory penalties or some detailed provision that rendered some contract or transaction unenforceable. At the end of our previous debate, I suggested to the Minister that, when you have a glitch of this sort and make an amending order, you can confidently expect that Parliament will be thoroughly sensible and will approve it 99 times out of 100, or even 999 times out of 1,000. However, the clause sets up a structure that is much broader. My objective is not that the Government should not have the power to make the special resolution procedures work—we all want them to work and to work efficiently—but that the procedures should be subject at least to basic parliamentary control. The clause takes a belt-and-braces approach and is completely on the level until the end of subsection (7), which says: "““An order … shall be made by statutory instrument, and … may not be made unless a draft has been laid … and approved””." That is normally what happens. I imagine that that is how the Government will construct the special resolution procedure and that they will want to make subsequent amendments to iron out little details. So long as they are sensible, they can confidently expect the support of Parliament, but they have given themselves the power to do the whole lot without the approval of Parliament. They do not need that. That is contrary to the whole objective of Parliament. The Minister has not addressed that point and I ask him with great respect to think again before Third Reading and not to cut us off now in our debates. If he comes back with a compelling answer, I am quite certain that anyone who may be mildly persuaded by what I am saying will change their mind. I shall certainly feel a great deal more comforted—I think that the House as a whole might, too—so I ask the Minister to do that.