Clause 156
Banking Bill
2:45 pm
Sally Keeble (Northampton North, Labour)
I completely take the point, but the inclusion of the powers in the Bill now, puts my constituents in a position to say, “This is what the Government can do; this is what can happen.” They can see that provisions are in place and that we will not get into a further crisis some way down the line and have to come back with primary legislation, which takes so long, and start to look at setting up such a scheme.
It is a difficult situation because we are trying to deal with changed circumstances, scales of losses that we had perhaps not previously expected, and the real complexity of how the structures of the scheme might work. On the contribution that the banks might make, even the Governor of the Bank of England had to be pressed and pressed when talking about, as I recall it, non-negligible billions. We need to say now that we are prepared to give the Government the powers to introduce a pre-funded scheme so that we can make sure that, in consultation with the industry, we can give the public of this country the best possible assurance that if they put their money into a bank, their interests will be protected. We need to give that to people now and the clause is key to doing so. That is why I strongly support it.