Northern Rock and Banking Reform

The right hon. Gentleman has uttered the usual incantation about not privatising the risks and ensuring that we have the profits in the public sector, but that is not quite the case for a bank, which is a very different kind of organisation. Because of the risk of contagion in the entire banking system, the risk in relation to depositors must ultimately be in the hands of the state, in some form or another, whether through the Bank of England or the Treasury, or in some other way. The depositors need to be looked after, and to that extent there must, if we are to have a working banking system, be some opportunity for intervention to take place. The right hon. Gentleman seems not entirely to recognise that banks are different organisations from the average public or private company that is about to go down.