Financial Services Bill

In common with the shadow Chancellor, I would like to apologise for being unable to attend for the concluding speeches. It is a great pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable). I am pleased that he has given a general welcome to much in the Bill. Having read the Bill and on listening to today's speeches, it strikes me that a great deal will be left for the Committee stage, which is likely to involve debate over detailed complicated amendments—both wrecking and others—so I am bitterly disappointed that I have not been invited to sit on it. [Interruption.] I am sure that those who do have that honour and pleasure will keep me well informed about the progress they are making. I look forward to hearing that some of the problems I foresee—on short selling and on other issues raised by the hon. Gentleman—are resolved at that stage. It seemed to me that even the shadow Chancellor, if we put aside his polemics, was broadly in agreement with the provisions and measures—certainly the objectives—in the Bill. One point on which he rather doggedly nailed his colours, his prestige and his personal pride to the mast—Labour and Liberal Democrat Members do not understand his reason for doing so—was in respect of the merger, or indeed the subordination, of the Financial Services Authority and its functions to the Governor of the Bank of England, who clearly does not want that role; at least, he has not made that clear to me yet.