Clause 216
Banking Bill
1:30 pm
Mark Todd (South Derbyshire, Labour)
It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Gale. I will cover similar ground to the hon. Member for Fareham, but perhaps not at quite the length he treated us to.
First, I will focus on what is in the Bill and the purpose of my amendment, and then go back to some fundamental principles. Financial stability and any objective that we set in that regard should be set by a democratic body. In this context, that must be the Treasury, and its policies should be answerable to the House of Commons, so the first goal is for the Government to set out exactly how they intend to drive forward the achievement of financial stability in this country, however defined. That is not set out in the Bill, and my purpose in proposing the amendment is to provoke the Government to say more about it. It would be helpful if they defined their approach more sharply. The Bill does not give responsibility for financial stability to the Bank; what it actually states is that the Bank
“shall contribute to protecting and enhancing the stability of the financial systems of the United Kingdom”.
That is a rather different thing, because I think that we all accept—the hon. Member for Fareham made this clear—that there are a number of potential assistants in that process. We have tended to shorthand the text by saying that the Bank has been given that objective, but actually that is not true. It has been given a specific contributing function, and my task is to try to make that function more specific and clearer.