Banking (No. 2) Bill [HL]

My Lords, before getting down to the speech that I have prepared, perhaps I may remark on what my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, has just said about the Bank of England remit. When the Bank of England Bill was going through your Lordships’ House, my noble friend Lord Barnett and I tabled an amendment precisely along the lines that the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, wants to see. Essentially, the Bank of England Bill should have adopted what was in the Humphrey-Hawkins Act for the Fed, whose criteria were inflation and a high level of employment.