European Affairs

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I, too, have a great interest in the mutuals; my family founded the Abbey National in the 19th century. What he has described comes out of the de Larosière report, as I pointed out in my letter to the Financial Times of 27 February. Does he accept that the structure is a legal framework from which everything else flows, and that if we were to disagree with its characteristics, it is only by asserting the supremacy of the Westminster Parliament and insisting that we legislate on our own account and require the judiciary to obey that we could get out of that situation—if indeed that was the policy of my party, or indeed his own?