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Banking Act 2009 (Exclusion of Insurers) Order 2009

I fear not. Unusually, the noble Baroness made the points that I was going to make as well. In a sense, I was surprised that the Government bothered with the order. As the noble Baroness said, one could conclude that the Government thought that either there were no circumstances under which a UK insurer would need bailing out; or, if such circumstances did come forward, there was some other means of doing it. If a UK insurer got into difficulty, the Government wanted to bail it out and this statutory instrument had not gone through, I suspect that they would find that the Banking Act was the easiest way in which to deal with it. If that route were closed, as it would be by the order, I fear that we would have another Northern Rock-type Bill to deal with an insurer that had got into difficulties. Echoing what the noble Baroness said, I would be grateful if the Minister could strengthen his arguments as to why it is necessary to bring forward the order; it brings no benefits to anyone whatever. However, it is a belt-and-braces provision that could in certain circumstances be useful.