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Banking Bill (Money)

It could well be bonuses. Some of it will be in actual cash, by way of loans; some of it will be by way of guarantees and indemnities; and some of it will be by way of stand-by facilities. However, we do not know what the estimated total exposure at any one time might be. We do not have much idea of what the underlying security might be. We have not been provided with a cash flow forecast to indicate what the peaks of this exposure might be. We do not appear to have any exit routes for how the money will be paid back, in what time scale it will be paid back, or whether it will ever be paid back. There seem to be no dates by when these facilities will no longer be available, how long they will be made available for, or what review periods will be undertaken to ensure that the cash flow forecast is on track, or not on track. Combining all that with the opaqueness of the Government's own accounts as regards their off-balance sheet items and suchlike, we have no idea whatever of the total exposure that the Government are suggesting we should agree with taxpayers' money. To debate all that we have three quarters of an hour, most of which has now gone. We have to decide what could be an unbelievable amount of exposure. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) said, it could be £1 trillion; we just do not know. I cannot conceive how we could possibly approve it today without a significant amount of additional information so that we have at least some idea of what is involved. If somebody gets us in front of a Committee in a year or so and says, ““When you approved it, did you understand what it was all about?””, we are going to look rather foolish.