Banking (Special Provisions) Bill

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman accepts that the difficulty is that, as soon as the Government underwrote the Northern Rock depositors, they were in a position whereby, if the music stopped, they were responsible for all the remaining losses. The error was to incur all the due diligence costs of hundreds of millions of pounds rather than nationalising straight away so that the Government were in control and could act to minimise the losses for the taxpayer.