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Banking Bill

My Lords, Amendment 81, in my name and that of my the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, introduces a new clause after Clause 228 which, put simply, provides for transparency and reporting to Parliament about the uses of both Clauses 227 and 228. We debated in Committee a longer and more detailed version of the amendment, and the Minister said that he would take the issue away to look at it. All he has produced is a little bit of extra reporting set out in Amendment 80, to which we have just agreed. I declined to group the amendment with Amendment 80, because they operate at quite different levels and I did not want the House to think that they were in some sense the same approach to transparency, because they are not. We noted in Committee that one thing that is not well reported to Parliament is commitments as well as cash. My amendment seeks to capture commitments as well as cash outflows. The latest schemes introduced by the Government to stave off the recession have typically involved guarantees rather than cash. Where and how can Parliament keep an eye on how much contingent liability is being racked up for the future? The answer is probably the annual resource accounts of the Treasury. As the recent report of the Treasury Select Committee in another place noted, the information that is contained in those accounts is painfully inadequate, and of course is not timely. My amendment calls for a quarterly report to Parliament, so that Parliament can track the build-up of both cash and commitments under the various financial assistance schemes that now exist under the very wide powers that together Clauses 227 and 228 comprise. In Committee, the Minister queried whether it was appropriate for the Treasury to report on other departments’ financial assistance. That is not a real point. The powers can only be used with the consent of the Treasury, and of course, we are entitled to look to the Treasury to pull together relevant pan-government financial analysis. That is one of the things the Treasury is there for. I should also note that my amendment has the usual let-out on public interest grounds for as long as the public interest may be affected, so there should be no question of having to disclosed information that is of a sensitive nature. In sum, this is a perfectly reasonable amendment that has the needs of parliamentary accountability at its heart. I beg to move.