Banking Bill
10:56 am
Ian Pearson: The Chancellor has made it clear that the Government and the authorities need to act generally across the system, as well as having the tools to be able to intervene appropriately in individual cases in order to preserve the financial stability of the system. It is clear that we have been operating under the Act that we passed in February of this year, but a lot of the actions that have taken place have been in the spirit of this Banking Bill.
The Bill provides both general and specific measures to enhance the resilience of the UK financial system for the future, including powers through the special resolution regime for the UK authorities to take decisive action where individual banks are at serious risk of failing. We have seen how that has happened. The Bill will provide a wide range of permanent measures to strengthen the UK framework for financial stability and for depositor protection. That is why it is important to have the Bill on the statute book by the time the Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008 expires.