Banking Bill

I shall come to that in a moment, but I would just say that we took action in February. I remember the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) asking articulately and forcefully at the time why we were going beyond the clauses necessary to acquire Northern Rock. I had to put it somewhat delicately because I knew a number of things that were not then in the public domain, but I said that there might be cases in which we would have to intervene. If we had not had the special powers for which we argued in February, I could not have dealt with the Bradford & Bingley situation, which arose during the parliamentary recess. We would have had to recall the House, which would have exacerbated an already difficult situation. Nor could we have dealt with the collapse of the Icelandic banks Kaupthing and Heritable if we had not had those powers. We do not have to imagine what life would be like without the current Bill, because we have seen in the past few months what can happen, and what can happen very quickly. I am glad that we got the special powers, and I am sorry that the Opposition voted against them. It was essential to have them, otherwise we would have been in real difficulty.