Financial Services Bill

My Lords, it is always interesting when there is a conversion from the permissive to the mandatory—a move from some quiet, partial obligation to some Hegelian imperative. The interesting thing about this amendment is: what is the further provision that the Government have in mind in respect of this statement? It is a joint statement, because it cannot be made without consulting the other parties concerned. Going back to Clause 1(4)(a), there is an obligation to, ""keep under review the impact (if any) on the stability of the UK financial system of events or circumstances outside the United Kingdom (as well as in the United Kingdom)"." It seems extraordinary to me that those words are in that clause. The sub-prime market—in the derivatives of the same, which started in the United States—had some effect upon the stability of the United Kingdom. I hope, then, that this move to "must" means that we shall stop looking entirely inwards and start to remember that it might have been good to have had some idea about what was happening in Iceland before the crisis—and that it might now be good to have some idea about what is happening in China. Indeed, the Chinese are beginning to make considerable investments in the United Kingdom. No doubt, they can finance those without recourse to any British bank because they have a great pile of United States Treasury bills with which to pay. I feel strongly that the Bill—in this part, at least—has a certain irrelevance or out-of-date thinking in it. It is said by the Prime Minister that we live in a global economy, and that he thinks he is the first Prime Minister to have been in that office when the world became truly global. Yet the Bill, and this part of it, seems to indicate that we can draw a line around the UK financial system without regard to whether it is possible to do that. My contention would be that that is not possible. It is possible to see part of the financial system as an enabling mechanism for making our economy grow either at one pace or another. Indeed, that is the most important issue facing us in the near future; how fast will our economy grow? However, it is not possible to look at the UK financial system as though it was just ours, with no impact being provided by our system and our banks on the rest of the world or by other people’s banks on what happens here. We deserve a much better explanation of why the Government have moved from a permissive to a Hegelian position by using "must".