I am sorry, it was my noble friend. That is a stunning statistic. The fact that some of the small German banks failed in the great crisis seems to reflect a strength and virtue as compared with the situation in this country where, but for the injection of in excess of £80 billion of taxpayers’ funds, as far as I can see the whole banking system would have failed. The big clearers would have gone to the wall—that is the truth. We do not even have a market banking system that complies with the supposed basic virtues of a capitalist system: when they were tested, they could be held up only by immense government input.
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I suggest that Amendment 102 might well have called upon the reviewer to look at more extensive issues. I would hope that we could also have a long, cool and deep look at the problems of entry into the banking system. I do not think that “competitive” is the right word to describe the current difficulties. Also, we should look hard at how we could bring in regional banks, along the lines of Amendment 43. I have difficulty with some of the proposals there—for example, that there should be statutory constraints on how a regional bank can accept deposits, being unable to
accept deposits from individuals or companies outside its region. I cannot see that that is a workable proposition. There are several detailed issues such as that which need careful review.
I also suggest to the Minister and to the Committee that we should look at the prospect of some of the smaller building societies being able to convert into retail banks much more easily than is currently the case. In my small town of Sudbury in Suffolk we have the Ipswich Building Society. It is excellent and is rather like the old clearing banks used to be when I was a young man: they were close to their patch, knew their customers and had stable staff and a manager who was known and knew his customers—in fact, they were pillars of the community. Today, all that has gone from the clearing system with a vengeance and, I believe, at great cost to our society and to the effectiveness and, indeed, security of the banking system.
A return to relationship banking is not something that one can conjure out of thin air, least of all through legislation. Indeed, the restoration of trust in the banking system is a bedrock of and essential for a revival of banking that we can be proud of. As I said, I hope that the Minister, in consultation with those who have tabled these amendments, will be able to come back on Report with something that we can all get our teeth into.