I can give you a firm assurance, Mr Speaker, that I am coming very close to the end of my remarks.
Indeed, I am no closer than I would have been before that intervention, unless I had been told to sit down, because I really am almost at the end.
I just want to say a word about the Opposition amendment before I sit down. It draws on a number of the Banking Commission’s proposals and, by seeking to put it on the face of the Bill, the Opposition have contributed something by forcing the Government to think again about their rejection of our proposals on licensing. The amendment was therefore probably worth while. However, the Government have now thought again and are implementing our proposals.
There are two aspects of Lords amendment 41 that would make me cautious about supporting it. The first is it would require regulators to pre-approve all people covered by licensing—or what is now going to be called certification. I fear that would risk recreating many of the problems we had with the APR—the box-ticking bureaucratic culture that we are trying to get rid of.
My other concern with the amendment is that it appears to mix up licensing with the professionalisation of the banking industry. It would be imprudent to link professionalisation to licensing too closely. Licensing needs to happen now. Professionalisation is not a substitute for it. Even if banking is something that could acquire the characteristics of a profession—which many people are not yet convinced of—it would, as the commission reported, take a generation to build that sense of a professional standard.
For those reasons, although I strongly sympathise with the intent of the Opposition amendment, it is not a Banking Commission proposal and I shall not be supporting it. The House could do better by implementing the commission’s proposals, which are now embodied in Government amendments.