Banking (Special Provisions) Bill

My hon. Friend makes a good point, because at least one clause will be privileged and thus will not be considered by the other place. I must say that he slightly surprised me, because I thought that he was again going to raise the issue of the exclusion of the courts. I am somewhat disappointed that he did not do so. The debate has made it clear that whatever their view about the principle of nationalisation—the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins) understandably has his constituents' interests at heart, while other hon. Members have given greater primacy to the taxpayer's interest—hon. Members on both sides are deeply uncomfortable about the lack of clarity about the Government's intentions. Perhaps it is a lack of honesty about their intentions. I do not know whether I am alone in this House in finding it slightly extraordinary to be presented with the proposition that over the past five months, when one of the most politically explosive situations has been sitting on his desk, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not established a plan B and he has not considered what he would want to do in the event that his preferred private sector sale of Northern Rock failed. He also does not have a strategic business plan setting out the objectives for its new management team and he has not given Ron Sandler a brief that sets out those strategic objectives. That is all extraordinary. Perhaps that is why the Government have included a provision in their draft order that the publicly owned Northern Rock will be exempt from freedom of information requests—so that we may never know. The risks of nationalisation are clear. The first is the politicisation of the decisions. I do not blame the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central for one moment for putting the interests of his constituents first, as we would all have done in his position, but this evening we have seen the kind of pressure that the Government will come under from hon. Members and from outside interests. Other risks include the transfer to the taxpayer of a huge additional tranche of liabilities at a stroke and the risk to Britain's reputation as a financial centre. We know that the risks are clear, but we do not know much about the business that the Government are acquiring on our behalf. We do not know how much we will pay for it, how much it is worth, what its assets and liabilities are, how long we are acquiring it for and what the purpose of our acquisition is. The truth is that nationalisation is not a solution; it is simply a mechanism. The solution has to be based on a plan, and the strategic direction of that plan must come from the top down. The Minister chose not to recognise a clear distinction a few moments ago. Nobody in this House, except perhaps for a few people below the Gangway on the Government side, wants the Government to micro-manage a state-owned Northern Rock, but we all recognise that the Government, as shareholder, must set out the strategic objectives that they want the management of Northern Rock to follow. The Government must give a clear picture of where they want Northern Rock to be in six months or a year or two years' time, of how quickly they want to shrink the business and of what priority and level of importance they place on returning it to the private sector with all taxpayer loans repaid. That is how the Conservatives would like the NHS or the education system to be managed—with a clear, strategic direction from Government and a hands-off approach that lets the professionals get on with delivering those strategic objectives. What we have is a wide-ranging Bill that has received little scrutiny. Many issues are unresolved and will have to be dealt with in the other place. I set out earlier our alternative proposals, not for a fire sale—as Ministers like to characterise them—but for an orderly resolution of Northern Rock in a Bank of England-led reconstruction. The Government have a consultation paper out on future legislation to reform the banking sector, and I predict that when we finally get round to putting in place a regime to deal with—God forbid—any future Northern Rocks, it will reflect much more of our proposal and much less of the Bill that we are being asked to pass today. At the end of this debate, we are no clearer about many of the key questions. The Government have rejected all of our amendments. They will brook no criticism. The Chief Secretary has probably taken her cue from the Prime Minister, who said yesterday in his press conference on Northern Rock, with typical modesty, that"““we have made at all times the right decisions””." The taxpayer is now much deeper in. There is no sense of the direction in which the Government intend to take us and no business plan is on the table. I must therefore ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against Third Reading.