Banking (Special Provisions) Bill

It is not unreasonable that more information should be available about the Government's strategic objectives in relation to Northern Rock. I say that particularly in the light of the debate earlier today. I sat through most of it, and two things are not clear to me. First, people are accustomed to talk about Northern Rock as though it were the hapless victim of international credit crunch storms. Actually, it was the victim of a flawed business model, and I have yet to hear Ministers from my own Front Bench take a view on that business model. Secondly, colleagues representing seats from Newcastle and the north-east strongly stated the point of view that, in public ownership, the bank should both stick to the same business model and get bigger and better—to paraphrase a colleague, it should be a northern bank to vie with other great international financial institutions—yet many newspapers and commentators talk of an orderly run-down over time. Until we have some clarity about where the bank is going, the kind of robust accountability that we need from a nationalised bank will not be possible.