Banking (Special Provisions) Bill

I will in a second, but I do not want to go on too long. Let me just put the other side of the equation. Is the objective to run the bank down? I make it clear that I support nationalisation of whatever form the Government or Opposition put forward. It is defensible if one is going for an orderly run-down of the business. That means no fire sale now, in awful market conditions. It means holding the assets, particularly the loan book, for as long as is necessary to get the best reasonable return when market conditions return to normal. If one is sailing on, trading, is the objective to run the bank down? I gather that the new management were giving guidance to the press that the bank would be smaller, preparing people for the fact that there might be redundancies and the bank might be scaled down. How is it supposed to do that? I do not understand how a publicly owned business sets out to run itself down. Does it decide to offer rather less attractive terms for mortgages? Does it tell its customers when they come back to renew their mortgages that it will refinance them only at a higher rate than the competition in order to drive them away? Does it reduce its savings rate after looking at what other people are advertising to make sure that it does not get too many people coming along to save? If the idea is to slim the business down a bit, what is the Treasury guidance? How much should it be slimmed down? Will the Treasury tell the management, ““Slim it down a lot. We are really trying to get rid of it, just like the Tories, but we don't want to admit to all those north-east MPs that that is what we are doing.”” Or will the Treasury say, ““Just slim it down a little bit. Make it look respectable. Just reduce the size of the business; get it trimmed down a little.”” Of course the strategic plan will have to be on more formal terms than that, but there must be guidance from the Government. Anyone running the bank now must ask the Government, ““Do you want us to build the business up as aggressively as possible or to run it down? If so, could you give a bit of an indication of how much either way?”” My feeling—I trust that the Minister will correct it—is that neither the Chancellor nor the Minister have the faintest idea at the moment which of those directions they are going to give.