Clause 1
Banking Bill
11:15 am
Peter Viggers (Gosport, Conservative)
I would submit that the situation at Lloyd’s and the present situation are very comparable. When the Minister said that the Lloyd’s case would not have led to the collapse of the financial markets, he described Lloyd’s as a company. Lloyd’s is not a company. It is an unincorporated structure. The people backing Lloyd’s at that time were 30,000 of some of the richest people in the United Kingdom, whose names were put forward to become names at Lloyd’s. If Lloyd’s had failed it might well have led to the bankruptcy of some 30,000 leading citizens and would have had a devastating effect on the City of London and on financial markets generally. The parallel is closer than his remarks indicate.