Finance (No. 3) Bill

I hasten to correct the hon. Gentleman: of course I think we have to tax banks. We have to tax ourselves, and we need to tax the other banks in the system, as well as the state-owned ones, but we must also consider the balance of effects and the impact on shareholder value. I entirely agree with those who say that if a bank is state subsidised or largely state owned and is therefore in receipt of state money, it is surprising that it should be paying very large bonuses. It is even more surprising if the bank is loss-making, because although an individual employee in that bank may be able to say, ““I personally made a profit to offset some of the losses,”” the senior people in the bank are corporately responsible for the overall results. It is at the very least surprising if a loss-making bank is making rather big pay-outs, because that is taxpayers' money and taxpayers' wealth being paid out to those individuals, which, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, is not then available to sell as a stream of profits when the shares are returned to the private sector.