Northern Rock and Banking Reform

That is a helpful correction. However, the point in answer to both the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) and the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) is that we now know that over the past few months the Northern Rock management has refused to accept any individual voluntary arrangements. Northern Rock is the only bank that has refused to do that. It is clearly worried about the security of the people who have been lent to. There have been complaints from the Insolvency Service that that is bad practice and against policy. Northern Rock is the only bank that is taking that extremely aggressive approach towards the people who have borrowed from it, as it is worried about conditions such as those described by the right hon. Member for Wokingham. We also know that whenever borrowers have got into any kind of difficulty—for example, when they have failed to make one month's mortgage payment—the bank has immediately come in to get a first charge on the property. That behaviour is much more aggressive than that of any other bank around, so why is it doing that? There is clearly a lot of worry in the bank about the quality of its assets. The question then arises of what happened to all those mortgages. The answer is that we do not know. They may have been dealt with entirely separately, as the hon. Member for North Durham said. One possibility is that they were bundled together and sold, through the Granite vehicle, on the market. A more likely possibility that follows on from what the hon. Gentleman said is that the mortgages were separated, with the good, traditional mortgages being sold off through Granite—sold through intermediation into markets—and all the unsecured loans being left behind in Northern Rock, which is now a nationalised bank. If that is what happened, the outcome is worrying. It has been worrying all along, both when Northern Rock was nationalised and when it was not, but that is what we are left with. I have been trying to secure a proper, independent audit, as have hon. Members from different parties. Clearly, the FSA failed in that task. We need to get a proper understanding of how good the assets really are. The honest answer is that we do not know. I hope that the Select Committee goes further into the issue in future.