My Lords, I rather thought I would get that answer—that the power has never been used—because I certainly could not recall any situation when it could have been used. My noble friend the Minister has put up a good case for keeping
something that has been there since 1946—which is rather a long time—and has never been used but might be needed in an emergency, notwithstanding that, certainly for the last 20 years, we have been legislating on financial services and banks in extenso and there exists a range of powers that any intelligent person involved in this area thought that the Bank or the PRA would ever need to use. I think the case for removing these powers is unanswerable. I hope that my noble friend the Minister might think a little more about that between now and Report. It would be a good thing for the Government to bring forward something that would clean up our statute book. I beg leave to withdraw.