I commend the noble Lord, Lord Flight, on his ongoing campaign for small banks and more diversity—not that I dissent from it, but it is consistent. What I have more trouble with is the concept of competence and integrity in the banking system, and the idea that somehow we should more readily trust the banks than the regulator. The banks have not got much of a record over the past three or four years in terms of either competence or, frankly, integrity. There is virtually no major bank that has not shown some errors in terms of integrity or shown some failure in competence or ripped off customers through mis-selling. The poor FSA might not have done brilliantly, but it did investigate these areas and produce perfectly sensible reports. As far as one can see, the FCA has got off to a good start. It is producing good and competent reports. I want to express my belief that the regulator is doing, and will continue to do, a good job.
The amendment is quite rightly interpreted as saying, “The regulator shall do”. If our amendment were to succeed, I could readily see some drawing back from that. My own experience in the airline industry is that the regulator creates the framework and checks the checkers—in other words, checks the senior management—but that the spreading of annual testing and so on goes into the companies in a trusting framework. There are ways of doing it without having thousands of inspectors around. Our general thrust is in the right direction. However, I get a sense from what
is happening in the House tonight and the chances of me persuading people on this point are slim, so I will not press this to a Division. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.