My Lords, I add my thanks to all noble Lords who have contributed this evening. A number of striking comments and speeches
have been made, notable among them that of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, with his description of a Sharia-compliant bank and the impact that that can have and his deployment of his experience both in the other place and in the banking industry over many years.
The debate has ranged far and wide. I want to draw on two characters. One is Dracula. We have the threat of reincarnation—or, if one is into “Doctor Who”, regeneration—of the Parliamentary Banking Standards Commission. I saw the blood drain from the face of the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, as I sat from this distance. I hope that we can find some stake and clove of garlic that can put it into its grave and that someone else will have the pleasure of reincarnating it at some point.
The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, clearly reminded us that financial services are immensely connected and that what you squash down in one place pops up in another—to put it less elegantly than he did—often with great force, little regulation and usually much danger. His exceptional speech should be noted and thought about. I fear that there will be need for continual monitoring of what happens over the next few years.
I have a couple of comments. I shall be brief, because we are at the end of our time and it has been a long day. The comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, about size were also strong reminders of the difficulties that we face. One of the most memorable comments in evidence for me was from a former head of UBS, clearly deeply affected personally by the pain of what he had gone through. He was one of those bankers who came who had borne the whole weight of it on his shoulders and suffered greatly as a result. There was no lack of responsibility from him. When asked if, in the depths of the night, he looked back and thought that he might have done differently, he said that you can have a big simple bank or a small complicated bank; you cannot have a big complicated bank. He said that if he had his time again, he would have kept it simple.
When I listened to the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Eatwell, I was reminded of the extraordinary statistic anticipating the banking industry at nine times of GDP, I was reminded of the need for banks to be kept to a size where they do not threaten everything is. They are not the only goose laying golden eggs in our economy. We cannot be a “monocrop economy”, as Martin Wolf described us in a notable article in the Financial Times in January 2009.
I cannot go through all the other points raised, but I heard with gratitude the comments about education. Competition is obviously essential, but, as the Minister said a few moments ago, competition must be to be the best supplier of the customer, not the most profitable bank going. You may get the second through the first, but if you aim solely for the second, you will never get the first.
Finally, the quality of finance—to which the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, referred directly and indirectly—is that which sustains our communities and enables the talent of our nation to flourish, grow and develop jobs. He used a phrase, “financial services”, that has
been used many times in the debate. All these industries, banking and the others, are there to serve, not to rule. They are, as I was taught as a child by my grandmother, when talking about fire, good servants and very bad masters.