Lord McFall of Alcluith
Main Page: Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lord Speaker - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord McFall of Alcluith's debates with the HM Treasury
(14 years ago)
Lords ChamberOne of the beauties of the current system and our future system of financial regulation is that decisions about the relative riskiness of different classes of financial assets are emphatically not for government but for the financial regulator, which in due course will be the Bank of England. So while I can ask the Financial Services Authority to write to the noble Lord, I am certainly not going to second-guess its judgments.
My Lords, are not all the building societies that became plcs now bust and out of business, and is there not a case for looking at mutualisation with responsibility? Surely the Government should be encouraging the FSA to go along those lines so that we have good mutual organisations, which have existed in the past, lending responsibly.
My Lords, it is important that we have diversity and a variety of providers of financial services. In that context, building societies of course have an important role to play—particularly in the area of shared-ownership mortgages, which is the subject of the Question. Many building societies continue to offer products in this area, and I welcome that.