Banking (Special Provisions) Bill

We support this amendment. There has been a lot of discussion about the extent to which Northern Rock, if it were anything other than in a rapid run-down situation, would be able to operate in a non-competitive manner on the back of the government guarantees. While there have been various assurances from Ministers that that would not be the case it does seem to us, both in terms of the rest of the banking sector and the country more generally, that we need to have some assurance that this is not happening. The good thing about this amendment is that, if passed and approved, it means that the Northern Rock management would know that the OFT is on their case all the time. In this respect it will be interesting to see whether the OFT is more successful than the FSA has been in the past. But this is its area of expertise and one would expect that it would. Therefore, we support the amendment.