Member

I shall be grateful for the Minister’s reflections. He will probably say something like, “The Bank of England has to consult the Treasury, the PRA and the FCA”. It has to consult the Treasury and a couple of regulators—a regulator consulting regulators; that is just brilliant—but it is just a consultation. There is no agreement involved in that; it is probably just a meeting or a couple of meetings. When the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, mentioned this earlier, she said, “Well, of course they’re all in it like a club”, and my heart sank. She is absolutely right: they are all in it like a club because they are all part of each other’s boards. There is nobody. I cannot tell you—well, I can, because I have just come out of the Treasury; there is no oversight. It just makes me feel rather disappointed. This is something that we must return to. It is about how long we let this go on for and what the consequences are for the British public, not just in financial services but in all sorts of regulatory areas. It is really important.