I admire the hon. Gentleman's persistence on this issue, which he raises endlessly, as he has the right to do, in the House and the Treasury Committee. He is becoming something of a gold standard in his own right.

The National Audit Office has looked into all these matters and concluded that the Treasury has met successfully its objective to sell in a transparent and fair manner while achieving, value for money. The report said that, in taking income from the foreign currency securities that we have purchased on account, the Government were on 18 December showing a gain of £23 million over what the gold would have been worth.

Such sales have nothing to do with propping up the euro, as the hon. Gentleman suggests. If he reflected for a moment, he would realise that every time there is a gold auction, we are involved in purchasing something like 80 million euro. That contrasts with the $1.5 trillion turnover on the foreign exchange markets on any single day. So, such sales represent a very small pebble in a very large lake.