Royal Bank of Scotland: LIBOR

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, on the RBS/NatWest/Ulster Bank IT failure, RBS has assured customers that nobody will be left out of pocket as a result of the problems. There is a Question down for tomorrow—number 4—from the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, that touches on Ulster Bank, so I am sure we will return to that tomorrow.

On the instructions to RBS and the monitoring of them, the Government manage their shareholdings in RBS at arm’s length through UK Financial Investments and the governance arrangements are set out in the framework document and the investment mandate between UKFI and the Treasury. It is all there transparently on the website. I believe that those arrangements continue to be appropriate for the arm’s-length management. As it happens, UKFI published its annual report only this week. It sets out a very full account of the issues that it has been engaged in with RBS and with Lloyds Bank. I believe that all the appropriate channels are there and that there is a high degree of transparency. I can reassure the noble Lord on that.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords—

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, will the Minister advise the House how many banks from how many countries provide regular LIBOR information in order to produce the average LIBOR rate?

[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

My Lords—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, at the heart of the LIBOR scandal we now have a classic conflict of evidence—

[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

Will the Minister confirm that the legal provisions for the offences—

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I have already given way once. Tucker is saying one thing and Diamond is saying another, so one or other of them must be lying. On the outcome—

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

When two noble Lords are trying to speak at the same time one really ought to give way to the other. They are both from the Labour Party so perhaps they ought to decide among themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, it is not a question of trading how many days one inquiry or another will sit. I could read out the long list of judicial inquiries that have taken two, three, four, five or 10 years and more. We believe that a parliamentary inquiry can do its work effectively by Christmas. These matters will be debated in another place tomorrow.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords—

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, going back to the Question asked by my noble friend Lord Empey, can the Minister tell the House, without going into specifics, what was the first point in time at which the Government gained any information about the possibility of the rigging of LIBOR?