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Banking Bill (Money)

I shall respond directly to the hon. Gentleman's points. First, on clause 20, the situation in relation to directors is unaltered since our discussions in Committee. Secondly, I wish to stress as strongly as I can the Government's view that there is absolutely no reason for bank holding companies to consider domiciling outside the UK as a result of the Bill. Thirdly, although one or two of my hon. Friends might like to think that we were slipping in some clauses that will allow us to nationalise the UK's high street, we are not doing anything of the kind. We are recognising that many UK deposit takers are complex group undertakings. That is why we have considered whether additional powers are necessary to resolve any substantial difficulties that those groups get into, and why we introduced the relevant amendments in the other place. The hon. Gentleman suggested that we had not necessarily done all our homework, but we have continually looked long and hard at whether the powers that we are taking are appropriate and necessary. As he knows, substantial contingency planning has taken place. He is right that it might be difficult to isolate the bank within a group, which is precisely why we need the ability to take a holding company into temporary public ownership. We could then stabilise the whole group and resolve the situation so that it goes out of public ownership, using onward transfer powers for a fast onward sale of the bank or the whole group.