Member

I also have an amendment in this group, for which I slightly apologise because I am not sure it is quite in the right place. Again, I wanted to test that, in a reasonable worst-case scenario, we had a mechanism by which somebody somewhere would have some accountability over the size of the levy that will be levied on the UK banking system, potentially over many years. Again, I am concerned about that. It comes back to the earlier point about contagion and financial services collapse sometimes being rather more significant than a single unit. I am testing the Minister: does he consider that some level of accountability should be inserted? The drag on the economy and on any recovery from a multiyear levy would be significant. I am uncomfortable about just leaving it up to the regulators to say, “Well, the UK banks can afford £1.5 billion a year. If we need £20 billion, that is whatever over X number of years”. It does not strike me that that decision should be taken purely by regulators.