Financial Stability

I thank the Chancellor for advance notice of his statement. I very much welcome it because it is systemic and comprehensive, which I had asked for, and because the package as a whole is big enough to be very credible and to deliver confidence and stability. I hope that it does so. I particularly welcome the additional liquidity, and the fact that the Government will stand behind interbank loans. The Chancellor said that he would guarantee that no depositor would lose money as a result of the problems at Icesave, and implicit in much of what he has said recently is that no depositor will lose money in the event of the failure of a UK institution. Notwithstanding my welcome for the package, I must ask him whether he stands ready to make his implicit all-deposit guarantees explicit, if required?