Banking (Special Provisions) Bill

The hon. Lady is right that the powers are time-limited, with a year's life. They are quite specific powers, but they are not specific to dealing with the Northern Rock situation, which is what all of us thought we were coming to the House today to do. We have been surprised and the commentators will be surprised by the breadth of the Bill, which was widely expected to be a specific, tailored measure to deal with Northern Rock. We do not think it reasonable to ask the House to approve anything that is not absolutely necessary today in this compressed one-day consideration of the Bill, which clearly will not allow full scrutiny line by line. As I said in my initial remarks earlier this afternoon, that is bound to lead to a situation where the other place or, as is perhaps more likely in the end, the courts will have to resolve many issues that we have been unable to pick up and deal with during this afternoon's deliberations. Goodness knows, even in a Bill that receives proper scrutiny in Committee, we invariably find—this is particularly the case with complicated Finance Bills—that the Government have to come back the following year in order to deal with problems, omissions and technical drafting failures that have occurred, or with loopholes that have been uncovered in the courts. What we are discussing tonight is not the type of measure that we should address under this emergency procedure, unless it were explicitly needed for the purpose of the principal business in hand today—the nationalisation of Northern Rock. That nationalisation does not require any powers in relation to building societies. I will therefore press the matter to a Division. I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to support the amendment. Question put, That the amendment be made:— The Committee proceeded to a Division.