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Financial Services Bill

I do not wish to labour the point too much, but the problem was not that the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing but that neither hand knew what was going on. That is not a problem of co-ordination or integration. I saw the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) nodding vigorously at the idea that information flows more easily within an organisation than between two organisations, but the logic of that is that we should merge the whole of government so that we could get information more freely. In reality, it simply is not true. There are some natural divisions where it is better to have the inevitable squabbles between organisations out in the open, so that we can all take a view on them. The Treasury should have access to two different sources: one handling monetary policy, a huge responsibility, and the other with the massive responsibility of prudential regulation. Bringing them together will not solve the problem.