My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, asked me two questions. The first one was about electronic communications and the age profile of members of building societies. This is a permissive amendment, and if members wish to be given paper copies of documents then building societies in future will still be required to provide them in paper form. In terms of the owners of preferred shares, I believe that preferred shares are typically owned within the financial services sector, so they are rather different from personal shares. It is obviously a highly technical point, and I will write to the noble Lord about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, asked whether we were changing the two-year bar in terms of shareholders and votes on demutualisation. No, we are not. For ordinary, individual shareholders in building societies, the rules do not change. There are never more than a very small number of preferred shareholders because they are providing a specific form of financial instrument
to building societies. The concern is, as I said, that unless there was an exception to the existing rule, there is a possibility that deferred shares would move from tier 1 to tier 2 if a building society demutualised. There is no prospect of the number of deferred shareholders swaying a result on demutualisation because they are not the same people as the ordinary people who have a retail account at the building society.
As for the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, the Co-op Bank is of course not a mutual; it is a straightforward plc. It was originally owned 100% by the Co-operative Group but it is no longer, so to the extent that there may be problems with the Co-op Bank, the mutuality issue is not particularly relevant. However, there is no major relaxation in these provisions regarding the amount of funding. The suggestion that deposits held by small businesses should be treated in the same way as those held by private individuals is just common sense. It does not have a very significant impact on the funding position. I assure the noble Baroness that there is no suggestion that the PRA should reduce the rules around building societies because although many of us are fond of building societies, nobody can claim that they were immune from some of the excesses of the late noughties.