Those are points that I shall touch on in my remarks, and I am sure that other right hon. and hon. Members will do so as well. By way of response to the hon. Lady, I make the point that there have been efforts over a number of years. When I chaired the Assembly’s Committee for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, we conducted an inquiry into credit unions in Northern Ireland, which have a very large membership base and a very strong savings base, far beyond those of credit unions here, which by comparison are merely developing.
The fact is that credit unions in Northern Ireland have been precluded from having as broad a range of services to offer their members, unlike credit unions here, and the key to broadening the range of services, of course, was to have credit unions in Northern Ireland regulated by the Financial Services Authority—subsequently the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority.
However, while credit unions in Northern Ireland will be regulated from London institutions for those financial services, they still come under a devolved legislative window. That goes back to the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which deliberately ousted credit unions from the reserved power in relation to financial services through specific mention of the fact that devolution would include the Credit Unions (Northern Ireland) Order 1985. Credit unions are therefore in a sort of dual-control legislative and regulatory environment; they are registered under devolved legislation but regulated under financial services legislation of this Parliament, and rightly so.
However, that leads to some quirks and bumps in interpretation. A credit union Bill that would address some of those issues seems to be held up somewhere in the Assembly processes. In those circumstances credit unions are particularly concerned that they might become unintended casualties of some of the restrictions and exceptions that are rightly being introduced with the devolution of corporate tax by the Government and with the agreement of the parties in the Assembly.