Clause 223
Banking Bill
3:00 pm
Angela Eagle (Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury; Wallasey, Labour)
It is difficult to be precise. If we were to move from a weekly to a fortnightly report, some of the problems that occurred with Northern Rock might reassert themselves. The Bank has to report, quite rightly, on an annual basis, and there is a bi-annual report on financial stability and monetary policy. Those are standard ONS reporting requirements and include issues of money supply and other areas for national statistics.
The difficulty, which I think the hon. Gentleman appreciated by the way that he asked the question, is that if the Government changed the weekly report to a fortnightly one, it still might not deal with a particular context. Liquidity support that was essential to prop up an institution in trouble might be revealed earlier in a way that did damage.