Financial Services Bill

My Lords, I intervene reluctantly, but I see a lack of logic in what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. If the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is not needed, and nor is that of my noble friend Lady Hayter, can he give us any explanation of how the criminal—I use that word again—activities of so many people in the City went on for year after year? If everything is fine and we do not need to establish standards, why did the City not behave appropriately? I use the words “the City” to indicate not just one or two people in the City but a culture right across it. It was the atmosphere there, that is what happened and that is why, in the last-chance saloon of your Lordships’ House, my noble friend Lord Phillips and others are trying to do something about it—in order, to put it bluntly, to get the reputation of the City back to where it was decades ago, when most of us were young and could look at it with admiration and pride. We cannot do that now.