My Lords, I shall speak only very briefly, because I have a great deal of sympathy with the proposition that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, puts before us. The resistance in the industry to rules is not to the principle of the rules but to the way in which they operate, and the cumbersome methodologies—the dotting of every i three times and crossing of every t four times—that drives people completely insane. It has undermined respect for both the regulator and its effectiveness. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said she had something broader in mind, and she will find amendments coming forward later, particularly in the name of my noble friend Lady Bowles, focusing on the issue of efficiency. I think that is something we would all like to see.
There are those who would like to see less regulation per se, and those like me who are very cautious about having less regulation. Obviously, less regulation may release animal spirits and innovation, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, pointed out earlier; in fact, he did not talk about animal spirits, but he talked about innovation. The downside is that light-touch regulation could leave you with a financial crisis, an awful lot of victims and, potentially, an undermined economy. It is very asymmetric. But efficiency ought to be built into the very heart of this, and regulation ought to be designed to put a minimum operational burden on the various parties affected. If we can adopt that somewhere as a principle in the Bill, it would be exceedingly useful.