My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, both on his amendment, for which he has secured widespread support, including from this Bench, and on the way in which he detailed the key arguments behind it, which I know the Government will take seriously. It is somewhat unnecessary for me to fill in any of the interstices that the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, may have left—which were not many—because the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, has certainly emphasised the significant point, which is that British banking needs to be a good deal more diverse than it is at present.
After all, the Competition and Markets Authority disclosed its findings last month from its review of competition in the retail banking market and found—predictably—that the four largest banks had long dominated the British scene, stifling competition that would give consumers and businesses a better deal. We all know the limited success that has been obtained by the various reforms to make the switching of accounts easier. The British people, I am afraid, are somewhat inured to minor blandishments when it comes to their bank accounts, so there is a need for much more imaginary thought at the centre on how we can make our financial provision more diverse.
We have support from the Treasury Select Committee. The chair, Andrew Tyrie, has written to the CMA to ask it to report back before the Budget in March next year regarding the 8% surcharge on bank profits. He wants to know what impact that has had on the big four and what implications it has for the wider banking
sector. It is clearly the case, he believes, that one size does not fit all. That phrase has obtained throughout this short debate and is one to which I entirely subscribe. The Minister will be all too well aware that the Building Societies Association has made it clear that the problems encountered by financial mutuals in recent years almost certainly would have been fewer if there had been greater diversity in the sector.
I think that the case for this amendment has been made strongly. No doubt the noble Lord will be withdrawing it on this occasion but the purpose of this debate is to give the Government the chance to show a constructive response to what we all recognise is a real issue with regard to British banking. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, cited the German position. Is it not somewhat extraordinary that even under the so-called northern powerhouse, our great cities do not have individual banks? They no longer have individual building societies, either. That says something about the structure of finance in this country, which surely the Government should address in the context of a Bill about the most significant banking structure of them all—the Bank of England.