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Banking Bill

My Lords, I am sorry the noble Baroness feels that a report examining the case ““for”” prejudges the issue; surely in examining the case for, one looks at the arguments on both sides. One inevitably has to phrase it in that way to look at the arguments for a change from the status quo. I shall briefly support and amplify the case made by my noble friend. Why on earth does our state-controlled bank, RBS, have seven branches in Kazakhstan? Is that a prudent or proper use of taxpayers’ money? Barclays Capital, particularly its toxic paper machine that generated so many of these strange pieces of paper, was responsible for devising and rolling out Granite, which did so much to let Mr Applegarth and his cronies borrow many more millions than they should have been able to and drive Northern Rock even deeper into the mire. The investment banking operations of banks such as Barclays can create and accentuate serious systemic risk in our basic banking system. Three of the world’s five largest banks are based in London: Barclays, RBS and HSBC. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has not mentioned it now but I saw in the Financial Times today a rather clever soundbite from Mr Osborne asking whether we want banks that are ““too big to bail””. I did not see where that was leading, though; it would be interesting, if this amendment were agreed to or followed up, to see what it meant. Britain’s banking system is like a car ferry carrying quite a few cars but with three enormous articulated lorries careering around on the upper deck. It is very likely to keel over and stall.