Northern Rock plc Transfer Order 2009

My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to have this debate. However, we noticed that the Conservative Front Bench in the other place did not provide such an opportunity. If there is to be a debate in the other place, it will be on the initiative of a Back-Bencher. That should put into context just how much anxiety there is about this order and what the Government are seeking to do. At the beginning of his speech I was somewhat grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, because at least he started to put the order and the reconstruction of the bank into the context of the events that led up to the crisis in Northern Rock two years ago. But I was somewhat disappointed when he continued by saying that this was yet another experimentation on Northern Rock. We are not about experimentation. He must know above all, as his former constituents were greatly involved and threatened at the time, that the queues at Northern Rock were because the bank was in very serious trouble. There was no experiment by the Government. The measure received the most lukewarm endorsement from that side of the House, as we prepared to take what were effectively emergency measures with regard to the bank. We did that both for the bank and, I hasten to add, the deposit holders in the bank at that time. Because it was the first bank to be affected, the Government were quite rightly anxious that were that bank allowed to fail, the problems in the banking sector and for the wider British economy would have been profound.