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The Economy

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman gives me the opportunity to trade quotes across the Dispatch Box. Let me read something he said during the Committee on that legislation, where I was the Minister. He said:""If the FSA gets into the business of regulating risk, it is perilously close to substituting for the fundamental job of the industry itself."—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 15 July 1999.]" He was not arguing that somebody else should do the regulation; he was arguing that nobody should do it. The hon. Members for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) and for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) claimed that the Government had pressed for light-touch regulation when the FSA was introduced, but their party was pressing for lighter-touch regulation. That was their whole approach, and it has been the consistent Tory theme.