Banking (Special Provisions) Bill

My Lords, when I stood in this place in November with as much confidence as I could muster and said that there were only two options facing the Government and Northern Rock, one of which was nationalisation and the other administration, I did so with some trepidation. I was greatly cheered on that occasion because I had the immediate support of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and several noble Lords on the Labour Back Benches. However, I was not surprised when on that occasion the noble Lord, Lord Davies, gave me a metaphorical pat on the head—the first of several—and said, ““There, there. What would we expect from the Lib Dems? Don’t worry, it’ll be all right””. Well, it obviously has not been all right. In the intervening three months, the Government have clearly crept with extreme reluctance towards the option of nationalisation. However, I was reassured in my own mind that at least contingency planning was being undertaken and that no doubt a crack team of the finest minds at the Treasury was working night and day to ensure that, if the dread day in the Government’s mind ever came to pass when nationalisation had to take place, a plan of Rolls-Royce smoothness would swing into action, enabling the Government to carry all the arguments before them on how they expected the nationalisation to take place. We have had a lot of discussion about nationalisations over the past few days, and British Leyland was mentioned. It deserves a final mention because at times the Government’s progress and ability to deal with some of the ascents and bumps on the road have matched those of some of the less impressive British Leyland models in that company’s worst years. Far from being able to come out of this debate knowing, for example, exactly how Granite works and how the Government intend to deal with it, we are left with considerable confusion. However, we have had robust and remarkably full debates within the time constraints and I think that, in their arguments and attempts to reach agreement where that was possible, the parties have reflected British parliamentary democracy as we know it not necessarily at its best but certainly very far from at its worst. We have made amendments that have improved the Bill, although we had hoped that the amendments that we sent back to the Commons would have been approved. On the amendment that my noble friend Lord Oakeshott moved earlier today on an independent audit, it is rather sad that the Government produced a technical argument to rebut it when we know that that is not their real reason. Why do they not just say what the real reason is? We know that Mr Sandler, who is being consulted at every second by the Government, does not want the bother of independent auditors to upset what he is doing at this point. The amendment proposed that there should be an annual audit by the Bank of England, but the argument that that is defective because the Bank of England does not do audits does not stand up. The Bank of England could get other people in to carry out audits as its agents. There are arguments against the amendment but that one, frankly, is not valid. The same applies to the arguments about freedom of information. We have been back and forth over them and, much as I am tempted, I shall not go over them again, but we are equally unconvinced in that regard. However, as noble Lords who sat through today’s debates know, on several occasions, not least when talking about statutory instruments, I argued strongly that it was important that Northern Rock be nationalised tomorrow rather than at some time in the future. As we are very near tomorrow now, it would be inappropriate to test the opinion and the patience of the House by debating this further.