Financial Services Bill

Then I merely say, Madam Deputy Speaker, that new clause 11 would insert after the word "Treasury" the words,""the Council for Financial Stability"," and that that makes my point. The council for financial stability contained in these clauses is part and parcel of a proposal that Conservative Members are putting forward to try to put greater sense into the arrangements proposed in the Bill. I am deeply concerned about the imposition of international financial regulation and supervision on to the United Kingdom. We will pay a very heavy price for it. As with appeasement in the 1930s, I do not think that people yet appreciate just how significant all this is. When the Bill refers to""international financial regulation and supervision"," that means""regulation and supervision by an international body or organisation of the financial systems operating in different countries or territories"," and "relevant authorities" means the Treasury, the FSA and the Bank of England. I am not convinced that putting the council for financial stability into this equation will necessarily be able to override the total loss of the control on which I think the British people would expect us to insist as regards the banking system of the United Kingdom and the central banking associated with it, which has been increasingly divorced from us since the time of the Maastricht treaty. Having served on the Committees that considered the Bills that became the Banking Act 1986 and the Financial Services Act 1989, and having witnessed the manner and the extent to which we have now completely abdicated our responsibilities, I am not surprised that we are debating this matter. I think that that abdication will come home to roost. We will find that we want to do things, and we will be told that we cannot do them and that if we do, sanctions will be imposed on us—although if the stability and growth pact is anything to go by, nobody will apply them. This Bill is nonsense, the Committee stage was nonsense, and the Report stage is compounding nonsense into farce. It is a very great pity that we are handing over the running of our financial services to other people, but those are my views and that is all I have to say.