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Banking

I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Newby for expressing some of the sentiments that I wish I had expressed as succinctly as he did about the Opposition's abject failure to have gripped these issues earlier, and for pointing out what a dramatic difference a mere £2,000 in cash makes to a senior banker who, under previous arrangements, would have been expecting to receive many multiples of that. We will consult on my noble friend's specific questions and have no presumption as to where the outcome of the consultation will be on the remuneration/disclosure issue. There is no particular magic about the number eight, but eight plus two executives on the board, which there might typically be, would total 10. That is about double the number disclosed in, say, the US or Hong Kong so we are already exceeding disclosure in the US and Hong Kong and going further to a position which might double the number of directors whose remuneration is detailed. That seems to be a good point to start a consultation, but it will be an open one. As for the independent Banking Commission, I can absolutely confirm that the Government do not remotely regard this as an academic exercise. We appointed the commission early after we took office because we thought that it was so important to get to the bottom of the issues about the structure of the industry, ““too big too fail””, and so on. When my right honourable friend says ““Look forward””, he means in a positive sense look forward to what will be a serious and important piece of work.