The Minister has said that a report will be presented to Parliament before the bank is finally sold. In Committee, I asked her how the report would be considered by Parliament. I asked if it would it be considered on the Committee corridor as part of statutory instrument proceedings and if it would be subject to the affirmative or negative procedure. Will we have a chance to vote on this issue again? The Minister is nodding, so I am sure that she will clarify the position when she responds to the debate.
The Committee had a series of concerns, and I still worry that the bank might be sold on at some future stage as the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Investment Bank. Investment banks are going through a very tricky time, and things are not at all well in their sector.
Any purchaser of the GIB will be looking for maximum freedoms so that potential future sale capital receipts can be maximised.
The only robust consultation that the Government can point to, given that they will not publish the market testing and have not carried out an impact assessment, is consultation with the bank itself. They relied heavily on the bank and its executives in evidence and their response in Committee and, of course, those executives stand to benefit from the sale.
Amendment 17 invites the Government to commit themselves to providing Parliament with information on the remuneration of the bank’s senior management and board after privatisation. That information is currently provided in the bank’s annual report. For instance, how much will the executive team who are in charge of the bank stand to gain personally from the privatisation? How objective can their views be if they are to gain personally from the bank’s privatisation?