Lord Stewartby: I wonder whether the noble Lord is familiar with the gold sovereign of Henry VII, which has a Welsh dragon on it. It is very small but it is quite easy to identify it.
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Risby for the clarity with which he introduced the Bill. I have a long-standing interest in commemorative coins. In 1986, my noble friend Lord Lawson, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and, therefore, Master of the Mint, and I had the honour of presenting a coin for Her Majesty's approval. That coin was a £2 piece, which was connected to the...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, one of the problems of speaking fairly far down the batting list is that most of what needs to be said has already been said, several times. For the convenience of the House, I shall confine myself to do no more than identify a number of areas where I am more concerned now, as a result of listening to much of the debate, than I was before. I certainly do not favour abolition, even...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, I draw attention to a confusing passage in the Statement, which makes the text about micro and macro more difficult to understand. It says: "The Prudential Regulatory Authority will focus on microprudential regulation. It will bring judgment to the vital task of regulating the soundness of individual firms". However, that is not a task for regulation; it is a task for supervision,...
Lord Stewartby: To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the expected impact on public expenditure of any move to Birmingham of the Acquisitions, Export and Loans Unit of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, at this stage in the debate I do not want to go back over all the issues that have been discussed in what has been an exceptionally interesting debate so far, but I support the thanks that have been addressed to my noble friend Lord Steel for his tenacity and skill at keeping this subject before us and bringing forth, year after year-there seems to be an annual rhythm to these...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, I nearly forgot to get up, I was so interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Clark, had to say. It has been a very vigorous but extremely interesting debate. I have not prepared a speech of any length, which is a good thing, because much of it has already been said by my noble friends Lord Lamont, Lord Tugendhat and Lord Newby, so I just want to pick out some of the main themes of my...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, since this subject is going to come before your Lordships' House on many occasions, no doubt, in the next year or two, could we make sure that there is a degree of rigour in the choice of the terminology? In this Statement, we read about macro-prudential supervision and micro-prudential regulation. Regulation is not the same as supervision, however, and vice versa. Some of the...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, I, too, shall be brief but I should like to raise a general point. These procedures do not seem to have a great deal of pace built into them. There is plenty of opportunity for reports to be considered at the next meeting but the next quarterly meeting could be 90 days away. I get the impression that the Bill's treatment of the council's proceedings is a sort of construct in order...
Lord Stewartby: I wish to make the same point as the noble Lord about being too big to manage. It has become apparent in recent years that not only large conglomerates but many financial companies and banks that have gone global have not necessarily always faced up to the different cultures and regulatory requirements in other countries. They have become physically too big to manage, and this is a dangerous...
Lord Stewartby: There is a serious point. The Bill is very difficult to understand and to get a grip on regarding what will change and how the different parties will respond if it is enacted. I should be very grateful for anything that the noble Lord could do to ease my problems.
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, I was very interested to hear the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, about the way forward from here to the wash-up. It would certainly be helpful if noble Lords in all parts of the House turned their minds to their potential attitude toward different parts of the Bill if it comes to a wash-up, which looks very likely. Thirty years ago, I was responsible for handling the...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, towards the end of a debate of this kind, most of the key issues have been identified and discussed by other noble Lords, but over the years I have had the advantage, if advantage it is, of looking at many of these questions from different points of view. In the 1970s, as head of the treasury department of a merchant bank, I used to report to the Bank of England, while in the 1990s...
Lord Stewartby: To ask Her Majesty's Government when they will answer HL88, tabled on 19 November by Lord Wilson of Tillyorn relating to the Lloyds TSB Foundation Scotland; and what is the reason for the delay in answering.
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, I sensibly did not prepare a speech for this debate. If you are in the bottom quartile of speakers in a long debate, you may find that much of the ground has been covered by those before you and, very often, more effectively than you could do it yourself. However, I will draw attention to a few individual aspects and make one or two suggestions that I hope the Government will at...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, this is not a subject to which I gave much thought before this afternoon. I was not clear what my view ought to be about it and I thought that I would attend your Lordships' House to listen to the debate. It happens that this is one of the most remarkable occasions that I have ever experienced in this House in almost 20 years. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has made a...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, will the Government ensure that as much emphasis is given to looking at the problems in supervision as to looking at those in regulation? In the Chancellor's Statement, there was barely a passing reference to supervision, yet that, from an authority's point of view, is where the trouble started. We do not yet have any account of how things developed so badly and the whole...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, I add my voice to the sceptical comments from all parts of the House. When I first went through the Bill, this was the part which I found least convincing. We should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, in particular for setting out so clearly the arguments for replacing the Financial Stability Committee, as defined already, with something that has a better chance of working...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, it is indeed a sunset clause, albeit of a limited kind, which I think is needed in a case like this. There are so many different powers in the Bill that the Government, or various arms of the Government, may wish to pursue, that putting a termination date on this part of it seems necessary. Personally, I would have accepted a period of three years rather than two, given the speed at...
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, subsection (8) is drafted in a slightly odd way. It appears to mean that when the order is made it is in a conditional state, because if it is not ratified by a resolution of both Houses it ceases to have effect. Is that the normal way in which an order is made? If it is not, it is an extraordinary constitutional invention. Would my noble and learned friend care to comment on that?
