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Banking Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has justified this amendment, the primary purpose being to ensure proper parliamentary accountability of the way the powers provided in this Bill are exercised. It also provides, as she has said, a pragmatic solution to the issue of whether market intervention should be kept confidential—that is, that information may be withheld, but should be released once there is no danger of exacerbating the problem that the authorities are trying to solve. In addition to the parliamentary requirement, there is a more general requirement. The Treasury and the Bank are using a wide variety of techniques to counter the current problems. There is a special liquidity scheme, equity stakes in banks, preference shares, guarantees of inter-bank lending, risk sharing for lending into companies, refinancing of mortgages, lending which substitutes for bank lending, insurance of so-called toxic assets and, possibly in the future, purchase of such assets. Different interventions are being injected at different points in the process. Some may be in money markets, some direct into banks and some towards their credit-starved customers. Some assistance may be provided under the powers of this Bill, some under other powers, some under the Appropriation Act, and as the previous two clauses show, there are different channels through which they can be financed. One’s head spins in the face of all this. I think there is a strong need for a regular report which would take the provisions of this clause as its kernel, but would actually go beyond it. It would bring together all the different ways in which the Government and the Bank are responding to the financial crisis. It should identify each scheme under a consistent nomenclature; when it was announced; how much has been committed; how much has been drawn; what guarantees have been offered; any losses crystallised to date; the powers used; and the source of the funding. Above all, it must be clear and simple. Regrettably, the Pre-Budget Report and the Budget documents have become virtually unusable. They are rather like those cumulation songs, such as the ““Twelve Days of Christmas””, or ““Ten Green Bottles””, when not only are this year’s actions reported, but all the previous years’ actions are repeated until the document becomes ever bigger. The latest version should simply be compared with those produced 10 years ago. This amendment provides the foundation of such a report, and that is why I, too, am happy to support it.