My Lords, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, that handwritten notes such as those that we old fogies use would be useful instead of modern technology. I am grateful to noble Lords for exploring this area. Clearly, those who have been in government and those who have read the papers know that we are in very deep financial straits. This Government have decided to start a bank against all odds, investing £3 billion in it in the next period, which is a tremendous achievement. We have been told to get on with it. We have done so and it is here before you now, with a chairman and chief executive in place who are getting on with it. On that point, I would like to quote what the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, has said about
the state of affairs. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, for her very constructive and practical comments. The noble Lord said:
“We need to show government and private capital markets that we are a well run organisation with a good track record worthy of the injection of more capital or, indeed, borrowing money in capital markets”.—[Official Report, 14/11/12; col. 1529.].
That is absolutely fundamental. No one is going to lend to this bank or provide borrowing unless it can show a track record of prosperity. I can promise noble Lords that if we feel the need to borrow, we will approach the stakeholder well before 2015.
On that point, the Government have given a commitment that we will seek state aid approval from the European Commission in respect of borrowing before the end of this Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, very appropriately raised this. We have only just got this thing going but already we are starting to move forward. As the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, rightly says, it takes a long time to achieve these things in Europe but we are playing that game; indeed, we are ahead of it.
However, I mention a word of caution, as, indeed, did the noble Lord, Lord Smith. I think that the original budget of investing the first £775 million over the next five months will be difficult to achieve. However, I am confident that we can do it. It is not as if there is a whole load of stuff piling up to be invested in at the moment. Of course, we know there are investments out there, but the budget will be difficult to achieve in the first period. That shows that these things take time; it takes time to build up a track record; it takes time to build up confidence in the markets; and it takes time to build up co-investors, which will be the initial endeavour of the bank.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked about KfW. Rules are rules and the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, mentioned that we cannot do it in this country. I thank her for that. The UK’s boundary for public finance covers the whole of the public sector, including central and local government and public corporations. That reflects the approach of this Government and that of previous Governments. It is not something that we can suddenly do and in this piece of legislation we are not going to change the rules of engagement.