The three speeches/headings immediately before

1. 1 earlier: Charles Clarke

   It might well mean that. If we look at the inadequate finance regimes for many industries in this country, including agriculture, engineering and so on, we can see that we need much more dedicated provision. I can give the right hon. Gentleman the example of Barclays bank, which used to have strong relationship in Norfolk with the agricultural industry from which it emerged. That was gradually eroded by the development of new types of banking, so there is a less intimate relationship than there should be. That is the kind of thing at which we should be looking.

   The second major change since 2005 is the impact of the party political funding dramas and the parliamentary expenses crisis on popular confidence in our political system. We all know that it is exceptionally serious and that it is the duty of Parliament to address it before our successors are elected. I am therefore certain that the best and most political use of the limited parliamentary time available between now and April is to do our utmost to rectify those problems. The people of this country need to know that we have put right the flaws underlying the problems that have been exposed over the past couple of years.

   For those reasons, the Queen's Speech should have included proper legislation to regulate the funding of political parties, along the lines of Hayden Phillips's report, on which agreement was almost reached between the parties some years ago. That should finally resolve the ways in which the pay and allowances of Members of Parliament are set, rather than permitting both the instability and uncertainty that has followed unsatisfactory reports by Sir Thomas Legg and Sir Christopher Kelly, as well as an uncertain role for the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. Even if there were no further change in the composition of the upper House during this Parliament, we must reform the highly unsatisfactory arrangements for peers' remuneration and allowances by the end of this Parliament. That is being considered at the moment, but Parliament has not dealt with those matters properly, and an effective approach of the kind that I have described would go a long way towards rebuilding the trust in politics that has been lost since 2005.

2. 2 earlier: John Redwood

   Would that mean that a retail bank could not offer a business customer a forward currency contract?

3. 3 earlier: Charles Clarke

   I very much agree with my right hon. Friend. Banking is about more than responding to the injunctions of the European Commission, particularly the European Commissioner to whom we had to respond recently on the question of breaking up banks that are too big. We have to demonstrate our own clear approach, and show that Parliament has taken steps to correct the mistakes of earlier years that have had such a serious impact. That is a duty on Parliament, and we need to get away from the "too big" bank model, which my right hon. Friend has mentioned. I think that the break-up into retail and casino banking is a better way of doing so, and the examples that I have in mind are the landesbank in Germany and Crédit Agricole in France, which are based on a particular industrial function or geographical reality. We would do better to move our banking system in that general direction.