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Banking Bill (Money)

Before addressing the amendments made in the other place in detail and the amendment the Government are now proposing, it might help if I were to summarise the purpose and history of clauses 228 and 229 in the latest print of the Bill. Their purpose is to put the use of public money in the proposed bank resolution arrangements, or in the provision of financial assistance to banks and their customers more generally, on to a proper statutory footing. Clause 228 does that by providing the statutory cover for expenditure in Supply estimates. That is required under a long-established convention, commonly called the PAC concordat of 1932, that there should always be specific enabling legislation to enable the finance for a new service to be provided from public funds. We amended the clause in Committee in this House to give statutory cover for financial assistance where the institution concerned was not a UK deposit taker or a financial institution that was not a deposit taker—for example, a bank holding company—but further issues came to light that had to be dealt with by Government amendments in the other place. I briefly commented on them in the money resolution debate, and I shall turn to them shortly. Clause 229 provides statutory cover for drawing money from the national loans fund to make loans urgently where that is necessary to protect financial stability. We also amended the clause in Committee to extend the types of person to whom loans could be given to cover financial institutions other than UK deposit takers. I shall also talk about the Government amendments made in the other place after discussing clause 230. This clause, the result of the passing of amendment 83 in the other place, provides for more rapid detailed reporting of financial assistance given to banks, financial institutions and their customers. It provides for quarterly reporting of expenditure, and of guarantees and similar commitments that might result in expenditure, met with money voted by Parliament under the authority of clause 228(1). Clause 230 also provides for the same reporting arrangements for loans made under clause 229. It requires the Treasury to lay sufficiently detailed reports before both Houses of Parliament, but allows for the disclosure of the information to be delayed as long as there is a public interest in not disclosing it. The Government have always appreciated the concerns that many people have about transparency and reporting. Those are important issues for the whole Bill, and not just in relation to public expenditure, and we discussed them at great length in Committee and they were discussed at great length in the other place. The Government's view is that it is necessary to balance the desirable objective of transparency against the need for confidentiality in a number of contexts. There will be cases where action to tackle financial crisis, taken under the Bill or otherwise, can be effective only if it can be kept confidential.