Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Baroness Cohen of Pimlico

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico (Lab)]

My Lords, like many in the House I did not manage to speak at Second Reading either, but I have spent a miserable summer concluding that Vickers got it wrong. This is a horrible thing to say to my good friends in the Parliamentary Commission, but they got it wrong too about separation. I come from a long career in merchant banking. I was pulled out of the Civil Service to be a merchant banker and I understand very well how ingenious they are. We had a wonderful concept in my youth called the Chinese wall. All I can say is that ivy grew over that Chinese wall and ear trumpets went through it because we are an ingenious lot.

The very complication of the debate that we are having, the horrible complication of the legislation and the very real difficulty of the amendments all stem from the fact that we are trying to do something impossible. Ring-fencing will not work. It does not matter how many people you place in charge of it, you need institutional separation. As my noble friend Lord Barnett says, we are going to have to come up against this one of these days.

I am also fairly horrified to hear Members of this House describing ring-fencing as an experiment. What are we doing experimenting with the banking system? We have experimented with it before and we should not. We should be sticking to what we actually know will work.

I am in entire sympathy with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I think that his diagnosis is absolutely accurate, but I differ on the conclusion.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I did not say that I necessarily accepted the Government's conclusion: I was merely testing the Government on the logic of their own position.