City of London

I agree with the hon. Gentleman in so far as I think that such a tax would have to be done internationally. Other measures for banking structures and so on could be done domestically, but all those who advocate such a tax, from the IMF to Lord Turner, recognise that it would have to be done internationally. Moving on to bonuses and remuneration, I am reminded of the phrase, "We're all in it together", which has much to be said for it. We are now at the point where some of the remaining banks, such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, Goldman Sachs and others, have done pretty well in recent times. They have done well for a number of reasons: first, because of the Government guarantees, which mean that they have as much liquidity as they need or want, but also because many of their competitors have been knocked out of the market. In the coming days, they are potentially going to announce quite enormous bonuses for some of their staff. I think that Lord Turner was right to muse in the pages of the Financial Times on whether that is right and whether those bonuses have been earned. The Manchester study that I referred to earlier stated that a lot of those banks have compensation schemes that cover about 50 per cent. of their total financial turnover. It suggested a tax on such bank profits. The last party to do that was the Conservative party in 1991. Again, the banking sector would be wrong to believe that it should be business as usual, and the Government have made certain proposals regarding bonuses.