My Lords, I found that to be a very interesting speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. She took up a point that I had been thinking about, but we come at the prevention of terrorism from a different point of view. I believe that with this legislation the prevention of terrorism interface would be through money-laundering. Certainly it could be wider than that in relation to sanctions regimes and so on, but the specific area of prevention of terrorism relates quite directly to the ability of organisations such as al-Qaeda to put money through the system, apparently cleanly. They hope—and are able to be fairly confident—that there would not be the rigorous review and analysis that there should be by sufficiently senior people within the banking system.
I do not have the knowledge and expertise of some of the excellent speeches that we have heard this afternoon, but I have an interest in legislating to prevent terrorism. It is a critical part of our banking system, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising that. I hope that this is something that the Minister will look at.
The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, who I regret is not in his place, said something which I must admit prompted me to speak in support of the amendments of my noble friends. He spoke about the fact that we would seek to attract the best bankers, because they would be lured to places such as Singapore and Hong Kong and even increasingly to Shanghai. If a banker is sufficiently venal that he or she would chase the biggest pound, when bankers are not exactly paid the national minimum wage, rather than seeking to operate in an environment of the utmost integrity, then frankly I am not all that sure that we would want them in the British banking system. We have the ability through this legislation to underline our position as the greatest financial services centre in the world. It is specifically because of the venal attitude that we have seen that this economy and economies around the world were almost brought down.
I hope that in looking at the anti money-laundering aspects which my noble friends have raised in their amendments, the Government will think again about this. I do not think that there is a vast chasm here, and I do not take the view of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, who I often agree with, that there is far too much anti money-laundering legislation. Yes, that legislation can be profoundly irritating when you come up against it. There are an awful lot of things in life now that are profoundly irritating, such as having to put your toothpaste into a plastic bag at the airport. However, we live with them because we know why we have to.