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Building Britain's Future

Will the hon. Gentleman accept that for those who have reservations about the extent to which the Government should intervene directly in the banking system, the experience of Sweden, in the midst of its last financial crisis during which the banks were taken into public ownership, demonstrated that it was not necessary for the Government to get involved in individual loan decisions? They simply said to the banks, ““We do not care if you have lost confidence in lending to each other; your job now is simply to loan real money to real businesses””. That is the part of the banking crisis that we continue to face.