---

Financial Services Bill

My Lords, I believe this is the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, as to why it is wrong to persist with the FSA in its present form. If you start a very important and large institution, which had forebears, and it is a failure, it is very seldom—I should like the noble Lord, Lord Newby, to find me an example—that anyone can put the culture and performance of that institution right. Institutions acquire a character of their own in their very early years. When it goes well, it is brilliantly unchangeable, whoever happens to be in charge. But if they acquire the wrong character right at the beginning, it is virtually impossible to put them right.