Financial Services Bill

I shall try my luck with this new clause. Let me set out the stall behind the proposed change, which is not a probing clause but one for which I hope to have sufficient support that, if the Government do not accept it, we can vote on it. The current mantra, which one hears too much of, from Presidents, commentators and the media generally, is that we must move to a situation in which no bank is too big to be allowed to fail. I cannot understand that conversation. If we look at this country's experience, we find that Northern Rock was an honourable bank playing a very important role in its own region, but nobody in their right mind would think that it was of a size that would fit the formula that we hear in the cant being peddled about banking reform. It was a very small player, but the Government rightly thought that, small as it was, it was still too big to be allowed to fail because of the domino effect it would have had on other banks in our financial system and on our economy generally. So although I do not share the commentators' views about where we have got banks, I share the banks' view of where they think they have got us. The banks know that they have got us over a barrel, but we have come up with nothing to control their activities. We know that when the time is ripe—certainly, when the banks judge it to be ripe—they will try to re-establish an equilibrium that is even more favourable to them than the current one. I fear that in that world, particularly given the Supreme Court's action recently, one move will be to disengage from offering free banking to people who bank with a bank or a building society and have their accounts in surplus. I therefore appeal to the House not to trust the banks' better judgment, or what they see as being in their own self-interest, but to protect, most importantly, our poorer constituents. Every bank and building society that trades in this area should provide one account for banking purposes and one for savings purposes on which there should be no charges provided they are in surplus. That is my case. I cast the bread on the water and shall see where it gets me.