Financial Services Bill

I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to what has been an interesting debate. I do not accept the premise of the Minister that somehow this is all going to emerge from these constant reports that have been coming out of the Bank of England and the FSA and will come out of the new bodies in the future. I do not think that a regular monitoring of risk is a suitable way of addressing the question as to whether we have organisations that are too big to fail. Although everybody is frightfully keen on addressing this as if it is nothing to do with anything other than Glass-Steegall, it is not, as I hope I have indicated. All enormous organisations—I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, would support me on this—are very reluctant to break themselves up voluntarily. In terms of shareholder value, there are very often obvious benefits in big organisations breaking themselves up. They never do, however, because the people who run very large organisations enjoy running very large organisations. They do not want suddenly to find themselves running a much smaller organisation because they have split their business in half. Let us be absolutely clear. Goldman Sachs, or indeed any other large organisation, is not going voluntarily to split itself up into smaller bits. That is why somebody has got to do it for them. The Conservative Party is absolutely right to have an open mind on this whole question. If, at the end of the day, by some miracle, this report is instigated—I take all the worries that noble Lords have that we probably will not see this legalisation on the statute book—it would be obviously easier for my party to come to a clear decision as to what should happen. What we want is the facts and for the debate to go on, as my noble friend Lord Lawson has indicated. There are pros and cons on this issue. It is not altogether straightforward. I am the first to accept that. On the other hand, we have suffered desperately from organisations that are too big to fail and from big banks that have speculated with depositors’ money. When they go down, the taxpayer has to move in to bail them out; otherwise an awful lot of ordinary people would lose money. I give way to the Minister.