My Lords, I am in total agreement with what the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, has said about the importance of the reviews of this process. We have to realise that we really are breaking new ground here. In a way, this is a leap in the dark and we have no idea whether it will work. Obviously a lot of effort has gone into trying to ensure that it will work, but it is such a novel innovation that we really cannot be sure whether it will, or indeed whether it will have a whole series of unintended consequences.
Accordingly, I feel that it is very important that the process be kept under virtually continuous review. The amendment in the name of myself and my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe seeks to ensure that the first review and subsequent reviews take place within relatively short time periods of up to two years. The reason for that is that it is only five years ago, almost to the day, that Lehman Brothers collapsed, and let us think what has happened since then. If we were to retain the four-year limit, that would cover almost that whole period, with all the remarkable devastating changes that have occurred.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, in his proposed new Section 142JA, that such a virtually standing group should act as an independent arbiter and assessor of these matters. It certainly should not be, as in the Government’s proposal, the PRA inspecting itself. That does not seem to be a very satisfactory structure at all. It is not appropriate in terms of giving confidence in the reviews, and it is not fair to the PRA. The PRA should be able to stand up and do its job, and then accept that it will then be scrutinised by the sort of independent group proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull. My amendment would simply ensure that that group had a virtually standing role in assessing these major changes to ensure that, once we have taken this leap in the dark, we land on firm ground. On Amendment 5, I shall simply reiterate the arguments that I have just made. I beg to move.