Lord Hamilton of Epsom
Main Page: Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Desai, for pressing on this point of legislation. I remind your Lordships that there was, indeed, provision in the Queen’s Speech for legislation. With the changes we are proposing it is safe to assume that primary legislation will be required. It will come forward in this Session. We should talk more about that, however, in relation to the further detailed arrangements.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, will the Minister share with the House his views on “too big to fail”? Does he not agree that within the capitalist system it is quite reasonable for investment banks to make enormous sums of money when things are good, but quite wrong for the taxpayer to bail them out when things go wrong? Has he any thoughts about how investment banks should be broken up into units small enough to be allowed to fail?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that. This goes to the heart of the questions which the banking commission will, I hope, answer for us.