Financial Markets

My Lords, the noble Lord reflects in part on the question that the noble Baroness asked, so I had better make an attempt to answer that part of her reflection on this matter. Can the Government fully cost this position at present? Of course they cannot. We are making provision of the resources but we do not know the level of take-up. We are committed to producing a Pre-Budget Report in the near future, which will require us to address ourselves to the issues that the noble Lord has identified. He asked me similar questions last week, when I was obliged to be somewhat vague in my response. He will have to forgive me for that. In changing circumstances, when we are involved with proposals rather than categorical allocation of government resources, there are bound to be some aspects that are uncertain. However, we will meet his requirements when we produce the Pre-Budget Report, which will also help to identify the extent of government liability. The judgment on the categorisation of government debt is a matter for the Office for National Statistics, but it will be some time before it reaches its conclusions on that.