I think I will have to answer as I have before: we cannot prejudice the bank’s status. I think that our heart is in the right place but we are in some difficulty here. As part of any sale discussions, potential investors will be asked to confirm their commitments to these values and set out how they propose to protect them. We envisage that this would involve the new shareholders agreeing to retain the green objectives in the Green Investment Bank’s articles of association, to which the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham,
referred at the beginning, and to ensure that the bank continued to invest in a way that achieved a positive impact. I hope that that helps. We also expect that new shareholders will agree to continue the GIB’s existing standards of reporting on its green investment performance, and provide independent assurance of that. I understand that these commitments are not as strong as a statutory lock, but it is simply not an option to impose more binding conditions that would require the business to act in a particular way since that would have exactly the same effect as this legislation. The GIB would very likely have to remain in the public sector, with the problems that I described before.