On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Given the extraordinary levels of rainfall and the flooding that are occurring today in my constituency and elsewhere, can we expect a statement from Ministers so that we can question them on what immediate action they are taking today and what they can do in the longer term?

That is at the Minister’s discretion: it is not a matter for me.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to introduce more freedom, flexibility and opportunity for those seeking employment in the public and private sectors.

Two months ago we were celebrating the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights. Article 23.1 states:

“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”

Article 6 of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, to which the United Kingdom is a party, states:

“The State Parties to the present Covenant recognise the right to work which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work, which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right.”

It may come as a shock to many Members of this House to know that, currently, many people are not given the rights to work enshrined in those important United Nations articles.

This is an issue of increasing significance with the advent of the economic depression and the soaring numbers of innocent victims of the Government’s gross mishandling of the economy. In Christchurch, unemployment has more than doubled in one year, with very few job vacancies now available. Few would dispute that everything that possibly can be done must be done to create new job opportunities for our fellow citizens. My Bill, by restoring rights to work that have been taken away by this Government, would boost employment.

The first group that would be helped would be refugees who have sought refuge in this country by reason of persecution and are waiting for the Home Office to determine their applications for asylum. Why should those people not have the right to take employment opportunities that have not been taken up by British citizens and thereby enjoy the dignity of having a job? Although it might cause some raised eyebrows among colleagues to hear this, I am pleased to report that the Trades Union Congress is of the same view.

The second and much larger group who will be helped by my Bill are those who are currently out of work but would be willing to work for less than the minimum wage, which is £5.73 an hour or £11,918 a year based on a 40-hour week. Our Government make it illegal for an employer and an employee freely to negotiate the level of remuneration if it is less than £5.73 an hour for an adult, unless, of course, the work involved is unpaid voluntary work.

Before anybody accuses me of wanting to impose poverty wages, let me emphasise that I am talking about arrangements for freely consenting adults. The Government regard an income of £11,918 per year as much in excess of an employee’s personal needs. That is why a single person on that salary is required to pay no less than £1,887 in tax and national insurance, thereby effectively reducing their take-home pay to £4.82 an hour instead of the £5.73 that it is nominally.

Why should it be illegal for someone voluntarily to accept pay of £4.82 an hour? After all, that is all that is left in their pocket if they are paid the minimum wage of £5.73. Giving people the freedom to opt out of the minimum wage would help not only those who are out of work but those in the hard-pressed retail and hospitality sectors where businesses are going down like ninepins. How many such small businesses could be saved if those working in them had the freedom, in conjunction with their employers, to agree to reduce their wages?

It would be unfair competition.

The hon. Gentleman says that it would be unfair competition, but we are talking about the marketplace and people should be free to compete in the marketplace without restriction. A reduction to, say, £4.82 would be more than 15 per cent. below the minimum wage and would also save employers national insurance on-costs. It could thereby transform the economic viability of such a small business by substantially reducing overheads.

Voluntary wage reductions are increasingly commonplace in the private sector. I visited a small engineering company in my constituency on Friday where everyone has voluntarily taken a 10 per cent. pay cut. About half the work force have also been made redundant. Workers in other large firms such as JCB and Corus are reported to have done the same to enable their firms to be more competitive and to reduce the overall number of redundancies.

Such changes are not happening purely in the private sector. In Ireland, Members of Parliament and senior civil servants have taken a 10 per cent. pay cut. I am not asking people to support such a proposition if they give me leave to introduce this Bill, but that example shows the mood in the real world. It is ironic that the only people without the freedom to take a pay cut are those on or just above the minimum wage. How can that be fair?

We all know that many people are self-employed and earn far less than the annualised national minimum wage for full-time work. They can escape the constraints of the national minimum wage legislation, but not everyone wishes to become self-employed in order to enjoy the right to work. One of the most effective ways of creating new work, in the service sector in particular, is for services to be offered at a price that is attractive to potential customers, thereby creating a new market. We can all think of examples of people who might offer services such as window cleaning, child care, gardening, car washing and so on. Provided that the price is right, the potential employer may take on those people for employment. In the real world, it is accepted by the Low Pay Commission that more than 1 million people are already working at below the minimum wage. Many of them work in what is described as “the black economy”. How much better would it be if those private arrangements were not criminalised by the state?

The right to work covers not only the issue of remuneration but how many hours are worked. I have received letters from constituents who are worried about the potential impact of the loss of the opt-out from the 48-hour week, which was applauded by Labour Members of the European Parliament only late last year. My constituents argue that they should have the freedom to work whatever hours they decide, in conjunction with their employers. What reasonable man could argue with that? Indeed, that right is recognised by the United Nations, even if not by the European Union.

The final element of my Bill would require all public sector organisations to advertise their job vacancies externally, so that those outside the magic circle would have the freedom to compete for jobs on an equal basis. For example, there are 672 BBC management jobs with salaries of more than £70,000. Are there not many people out there in today’s job market who would give their eye teeth just to have the opportunity to compete for those jobs?

This Bill is about liberalising and deregulating the labour market. It is about removing the barriers to work that have been introduced since the last recession. It is not only an essential supply-side measure; it is also a restoration of that basic human right—the right to work.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Mr. Christopher Chope, Mr. Peter Bone, Philip Davies, Mr. Nigel Evans, Mr. Greg Knight, Mr. Edward Leigh, Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger, Mr. Brian Binley, Mr. William Cash, Mr. Robert Syms and Mr. David Wilshire present the Bill.

Mr. Christopher Chope accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 15 May and to be printed (Bill 60).

I beg to move,

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Banking Bill, it is expedient to authorise—

(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure of the Secretary of State in respect of, or in connection with, giving financial assistance to or in respect of a bank or other financial institution, and

(2) the payment out of the Consolidated Fund, in urgent cases, of expenditure which would otherwise be paid under the Act out of money provided by Parliament.

As the House will be aware, provision for public expenditure in legislation can be considered only if a money resolution authorising a charge to public funds has been passed. Such a resolution was passed by this House at the end of the Second Reading debate on 14 October last year, in the usual way.

However, as the House will also know from amendments made to the Bill in another place, which we shall debate shortly, the Government found it necessary to have the Bill amended there to provide the necessary statutory cover for expenditure on a wider range of matters than had been thought necessary when the original money resolution was passed.

In particular, as I shall explain in more detail shortly, it was necessary to make provision for a number of schemes operated by Government Departments that had, as their object, the provision of support in these difficult times for bodies that are not banks or other financial institutions, as well as for banks and financial institutions themselves. We therefore require a new money resolution to approve this extension of the financial scope of the Bill before we consider the amendments that the other place has made.

The Minister introduced the money resolution as though it were merely a matter of course and something that should go through without much debate. However, the Bill changed significantly in the House of Lords, which widened the scope of financial assistance beyond what is to be given to banks or other financial institutions. Later, we will discuss the effect that those amendments could have on banks or other financial institutions, on the economy as a whole and on particular industries or sectors, and on actual or potential customers of banks or other financial institutions. Those are broad amendments. They cover a number of packages of aid announced by the Government in recent months. It is important to put on record the estimated cost of those packages, so that the House can understand the scale of the liability that the taxpayer could take on as a consequence of those amendments and the money resolution being agreed to this afternoon.

In the other place, it was said that the changes required to the Bill would give legislative cover for: the first bank bail-out; the equity and preference share investments in the Royal Bank of Scotland, as well as in Lloyds TSB and HBOS, now Lloyds Banking Group; the credit guarantee scheme; the asset-backed securities scheme proposed by Sir James Crosby in his report, which was presented to the Chancellor at the time of the pre-Budget report; the £50 billion asset purchase facility, a scheme that authorises the Bank of England to buy commercial papers; and the asset protection scheme, the details of which we still do not know, although it will ensure a portfolio of bank assets in return for a fee. There were reports at the weekend that there could be up to £400 billion-worth of eligible assets in that scheme.

We could add the schemes announced by the other Department that the Minister represents, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. They include: the £10 billion working capital scheme, set up to secure £20 billion of short-term bank lending to companies in the small and medium-sized enterprises sector; the £1.3 billion enterprise finance guarantee scheme; the £1.3 billion that is to be unlocked from the European Investment Bank as part of a package of aid to the motor industry; and £1 billion of direct lending to the motor industry. A large financial commitment is emerging as a consequence of the amendments made in the other place.

Is my hon. Friend of my view, which is that we might be talking about half a trillion—£500 billion—of loans and share capital purchases, and another £500 billion of money guaranteed? We could be talking about guarantees, loans and shares of £1 trillion, and all we get from the Minister is about three sentences.

Indeed; my right hon. Friend makes an important point. The scale of the financial intervention that could be authorised by the Bill is much greater than many people anticipated, even six months ago. It is important to make sure that there is proper scrutiny of it. I will not trespass on the subject of transparency, and the reporting measures on which the Government have conceded; we will talk about that later. There are significant amounts of money involved, and it is important that before we proceed to discussing the amendments, we put on record the amounts of money involved.

I was rather surprised at how quickly the Minister sat down; he did not give us an opportunity to question him. If we pass the measure today, will the funds that we are talking about be consolidated on to the Government’s balance sheet, as is required under international accounting standards?

My hon. Friend, a fellow chartered accountant, asks one of the questions that need to be addressed. As I understand it, there will be different accounting treatments for different types of schemes. Schemes that provide a guarantee will be a contingent liability, whereas in schemes in which we take on debt, that debt will be on the Government’s balance sheet. As a consequence of the Government’s majority shareholding in RBS, the Government have had to recognise a significant proportion of RBS’s liabilities on their balance sheet.

As has been noted, the Minister was swift to resume his seat, whereas my hon. Friend, presumably in a bid to whet our appetites for the debate, has already offered us a litany of statistics. I am all agog: I want to know whether my hon. Friend is advising us to vote against the money resolution.

My hon. Friend tempts me, but we have accepted elements of the banking bail-out package. We feel that parts of the package could have been made much more effective at an earlier stage. We welcome the Government’s working capital scheme, which was announced by Lord Mandelson, although it was a pale imitation of a policy that we proposed in November. So although elements of the package may cause controversy, there are elements on which the Government have followed our lead. The important thing is that we hold the Government to account on how the schemes are introduced and implemented. We will refer to ways in which we can do so in the debate on the first group of amendments.

It is difficult to speak of a backdrop in the first debate on a topic, but it is important that hon. Members who wish to participate in the debate on the Bill recognise the cost of the initiatives that the Government have taken already, the potential exposure that that brings to the taxpayer, and the need to ensure that taxpayers are fully aware of the liabilities that they are likely to bear. I, too, was surprised that the Minister was so quick to resume his seat. He announced in the House at least one of those packages, if not two, and I should have thought that he would be happy to talk about their merits and why they would be effective.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to participate in the debate, but I shall give way to my hon. Friend.

A subject that I have been pursuing since at least 7 October is what is a proper measure of the percentage of gross domestic product represented by the debt—it is somewhat along the lines of the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone). My hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) correctly referred to contingent liabilities as the proper criteria. However, surely the real criteria should be the financial obligations that are entered into. Nobody could seriously doubt that we are speaking of financial obligations, so whatever the measure that may be imposed by virtue of a theoretical definition, the fact is that the figures are up to £2 trillion to £2.5 trillion, as I said in the most recent debate. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to work that out carefully so that we get a proper measure, not just a theoretical measure, of what is defined?

My hon. Friend makes an important point about trying to quantify the extent of the liabilities that the taxpayer is taking on. Dredging the recesses of my memory, I recall from my accountancy training that there are accounting standards that examine the extent to which a potential liability could crystallise and therefore how one should account for those liabilities. What is more likely to transpire should be provided for, and what is less likely to transpire should not be provided for.

Part of the challenge that we face is that one of the potentially largest elements of the package is the asset protection scheme, which will insure a portfolio of bank assets. Work is going on to try to quantify the extent of the package and what guarantees the Government will enter into with the banks, so we are yet to find out the true scope of the commitments that we are likely to enter into on behalf of the taxpayer in trying to resolve some of the issues associated with the banking crisis.

Building on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) was making—

The thesis!

It was not a thesis, but it was a very good point about contingent liabilities. Equity accounting rules say that if the Government own more than 50 per cent. of a bank or any institution, they should consolidate not just a portion—that is, 70 per cent. of the debt—but 100 per cent. of the debt. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we want transparency, the Government should consolidate 100 per cent. of the debt of anything that they own over 50 per cent.?

My hon. Friend, who has made a great study of the state of Government finances and their on and off-balance sheet liabilities, tempts me down a course which, if he does not mind, I shall not tread at this point. He makes an important point about the extent to which the Government may wish to recognise the liabilities. We are speaking of the liabilities of not just one bank. The Government have nationalised two banks—Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley—so their liabilities will need to be taken into account as well. In the interests of transparency, we have heard nothing about the condition of Bradford & Bingley since it was nationalised at the end of September. That will be referred to later, in the debate on Lords amendment 83.

I give way to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay).

I shall make a substantive speech.

I do not wish to get in the way of the hon. Gentleman’s making a substantive speech. It will be good to hear comments from Government Back Benchers, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that there are significant sums of taxpayers’ money involved and it is right to have a proper debate about it not only now, but as the scale of the liabilities unfolds over the coming months. Not wishing to deprive other hon. Members of the opportunity to speak, I shall conclude my remarks there.

I am pleased to have caught your eye, Mr. Speaker. I am a bit bewildered and concerned that countless Members of Parliament from all political parties will be responding to letters and representations from constituents about the bonuses being paid to people who presided over the banks that have failed. That issue is fully within the footprint of the resolution, which involves Parliament authorising moneys to fulfil the intentions of the Banking Bill, which is designed to bail out and underwrite the banks.

It is inconsistent for us in this Parliament to agree this money resolution when the Prime Minister has failed to ensure that bonuses are not paid to people who have failed both the banks and the wider United Kingdom community. In my view, the money resolution should be contingent on an undertaking that the banks will not pay the bonuses or that the Government will enact legislation to ensure that those payments are not made. I find it bewildering that neither the Opposition spokesperson nor the Government Front Bencher has mentioned the big elephant in the room—that is, the bonuses being paid. At the same time, we are expected to vote this afternoon—

The money resolution does not involve a debate about bonuses. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can raise that issue at some other point in the proceedings.

I fully accept what you say, Mr. Speaker.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that the consequence of this money resolution is that the House has to supervise a big bank with a medium-sized country attached—a £2 trillion bank and a £1.5 trillion country? That is why the hon. Gentleman is in difficulties.

Maybe. We are being asked to authorise this expenditure by Parliament; it is Parliament’s historic role to make moneys available to the Government. I was inadequately trying to make the point that it would be wrong for me, on behalf of my constituents, to acquiesce, by my silence, in this authorisation of payment just when the Executive branch of the Government, these Ministers, are not ensuring that the rights and interests of our people are protected and promoted to the fullest extent; I am thinking about making sure that the bonuses are not paid to the failed bankers.

I conclude by saying that I am not prepared to let the motion go through without making it clear that it should be a condition of the resolution that the Prime Minister comes to the House to say something about the payments. I am not talking about setting up reviews; reviews that take months are no good—particularly if they are conducted by a man who received bonuses. Working-class people do not receive bonuses, and earlier we debated a Bill about rights to work. It is now time that Parliament exercised its right, and I am tempted to divide the House on the issue. I hope that the Whips are listening in their offices.

This morning, the Treasury Committee spent about three hours interviewing bank executives. Part of the reason for that was our incredulity at how they had made decisions based on information about very complex financial instruments, which we suggested they did not know enough about before they committed huge sums to buying various assets and lending money in a certain way. We suggested to them that perhaps they should have had better training and education so that they could have understood exactly what they were approving.

Now we find ourselves here this afternoon. The Minister has made a statement lasting two or three minutes and is asking us to approve something, although many of us have not got the foggiest idea what it is to fund.

Bonuses.

It could well be bonuses. Some of it will be in actual cash, by way of loans; some of it will be by way of guarantees and indemnities; and some of it will be by way of stand-by facilities. However, we do not know what the estimated total exposure at any one time might be. We do not have much idea of what the underlying security might be. We have not been provided with a cash flow forecast to indicate what the peaks of this exposure might be. We do not appear to have any exit routes for how the money will be paid back, in what time scale it will be paid back, or whether it will ever be paid back. There seem to be no dates by when these facilities will no longer be available, how long they will be made available for, or what review periods will be undertaken to ensure that the cash flow forecast is on track, or not on track. Combining all that with the opaqueness of the Government’s own accounts as regards their off-balance sheet items and suchlike, we have no idea whatever of the total exposure that the Government are suggesting we should agree with taxpayers’ money.

To debate all that we have three quarters of an hour, most of which has now gone. We have to decide what could be an unbelievable amount of exposure. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) said, it could be £1 trillion; we just do not know. I cannot conceive how we could possibly approve it today without a significant amount of additional information so that we have at least some idea of what is involved. If somebody gets us in front of a Committee in a year or so and says, “When you approved it, did you understand what it was all about?”, we are going to look rather foolish.

I am almost tempted to suggest that it is worse than that. One of the component parts of this money resolution is the Government’s insurance for the banks’ excess bad debt, effectively covering the toxic debt, which is a moveable feast—it is completely open-ended. Is it not worse than the hon. Gentleman describes in the sense that debts, or loans, that are good at the moment can become bad as the recession worsens, making this a completely open-ended commitment to an unmeasurable liability?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. He is exactly right: it is worse than I was thinking. If we discussed it for another half an hour or hour, we might discover that it is even worse again.

Most money resolutions are relatively straightforward—I think we all accept that—but this is entirely different. We should not just pass it and get on to the Lords amendments, because it is fundamental to the whole question of our bailing out the banking system. Unless we fully understand what the exposures are, this House will not be doing its fundamental task of oversight.

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s remarks with care. Does he agree that there is a marked contrast with the situation in the United States of America, where not so many months ago the Treasury Secretary went on his knees in front of Congress to seek permission for that money?

There is a certain similarity, of course. Althouh I do not want the Minister here, or anybody else necessarily, on their knees, when they come to the Dispatch Box they should at least give us a much fuller understanding of exactly what we are being asked to do.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Japanese bankers went on their knees to apologise for the mess they got the Japanese economy into?

They may have chopped their heads off as well—I do not know.

Perhaps the Minister will be able to explain exactly what he wants us to approve, what amounts and so on, because at the moment I, for one, am not very happy.

This is the biggest, most important and most dramatic money resolution I have ever seen in the House of Commons. It has taken 1,000 years to amass a debt that the Government put at around £550 billion. Under this money resolution and the associated actions that the Government might take, they might double the debt by making that amount of money available as loans and share capital to banks or put the same amount again at risk through their loan guarantee scheme. As my hon. Friends have indicated, if we consolidate on the general balance sheet, as we should, all the assets and liabilities of the banks that the Government are buying, we do not just double the debt but quadruple or even quintuple it when one takes into account the full size of RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley—no others, we trust, but this is very open-ended and implies that there could be others.

The money resolution takes the form of two different assertions. First, we are invited to give the Secretary of State power to put out money provided by Parliament under these headings, and secondly, in urgent cases, to authorise payments to be made out of the Consolidated Fund. The Bill that backs up the money resolution contains even more wide-ranging powers relating to the central bank, enabling quite a lot of money to be generated by the bank through quantitative easing and the manoeuvres of its own balance sheets, so the process is literally open-ended. We have absolutely no idea how much is involved.

I was disappointed because I wanted to intervene on the Economic Secretary. He gave the impression of a Minister who was going to make a serious and sensible statement about this weighty issue, but he sat down as soon as he saw me trying to intervene and before he had mentioned a single figure. Call me old-fashioned, but if I were moving a money resolution in the House of Commons, even one for a modest sum of money, I would mention the sum involved and explain why I thought it would provide good value. We have a money resolution that could involve half a trillion or a trillion pounds. On a consolidated basis, if we take all the liabilities into account, it could be several trillion. We might think that it was worth giving a few numbers, or at least some kind of ceiling to suggest that the Government understand that we are talking about big banks in a relatively small country.

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that the Government do not know the answer because they have not had the time to do their own due diligence on the exact amount of risk to which they are exposing the country and taxpayers? That is why we are now on our second bail-out, and my concern is that we may end up having a third two or three months down the road.

I quite agree. I do not know whether the figure of £37 billion is retrospective, or whether the Economic Secretary thinks it was voted for under some other provision. We know, however, that £37 billion of equity capital was put into banks just a few months ago. The money changed hands only comparatively recently because it took quite a long time to get the approvals and do the final detailed negotiation. In the case of RBS, we believe that £20 billion went in one week, and the following week it announced it had lost the lot and a bit more besides. Again, call me old-fashioned, but I do not feel I got a lot of value out of that £20 billion, and I wonder why the Government put it in in the way they did, why they did not ask a few questions about the future results before they chose a price to put in new share capital, or why they put in new share capital at all, instead of using guarantees and short-term cash loans, which would have been quite sufficient.

To give a sense of perspective about the size of the amounts involved and the speed with which figures can change, on 13 October the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us that the assessment made on the money going into the banks at that point was a cautious one—the FSA had made it on a cautious basis—so the amounts involved were rather larger than might otherwise have been the case. Three months later, on 19 January, RBS had to write off £28 billion, which is the largest amount ever written off by a company.

That is right, and some of us have urged the Government in the past to show a little more concern for the public money involved, to ask more questions and do a little of what is called due diligence in the private sector before committing such huge sums of money to get a better deal for the taxpayer, if they feel that they need to do such a deal at all.

I urge the Economic Secretary, when considering the money resolution, to ensure that next time—I fear that there will be a next time because the Government are looking at a second package of banking support measures—the Government at the very least try to find out the scope of the problem. They should ask what the next set of figures might be. They should take that into account before valuing any share capital or loan capital they intend to put into the bank, and they should understand that a medium-sized country with an annual turnover and national income of £1.5 trillion will find it difficult to stand behind all the London-based banks with their combined multi-trillion-pound balance sheets.

If the Government are not careful, they will undermine the credibility and the reputation of their own debt and public finance by linking themselves too strongly and closely to some large banks, three of which we know have been badly run and have committed themselves to big risks and to big bonus and other contingent payments for no good reason, which have landed the taxpayer with a very big bill owing to the Government’s policy.

I know that others wish to speak. It is a pity that we do not have a three-hour debate on the biggest sum of money ever voted on in the history of Parliament, but I do not want to detract from colleagues’ time. I have made my main points: the Government should show more care, they should provide us with some numbers and they should understand that the total sum involved is too big.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) said, “Call me old-fashioned”. I am old-fashioned, as I believe most Members probably are, in the sense that I believe it is not unreasonable to want to know what liabilities one is entering into, or leastways to hear figures suggesting what those liabilities might be. “Due diligence” is a phrase that echoes through almost every transaction in the commercial world.

One problem is that due diligence did not happen in the commercial world when it came to our banks. The lesson for the Government is that they need to be much more wary when dealing with the banks.

That is a very fair correction. Of course we all accept the need for due diligence from those who serve us, professionally and otherwise, in the commissioning and undertaking of the tasks ascribed to them.

This country is clearly frightened. What is happening is without precedent in living memory. Unemployment is growing at an alarming rate, and we are watching companies fold. We know that the liquidity of banks lies behind that. We have already had what I believe was a 90-minute debate on a resolution to make available £40 billion and a further £200 billion. The House has been marginalised in the undertaking of its most fundamental duty, which is the supply of money. We do not know how much we are to supply on this occasion.

I go along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham in saying that the motion is open-ended, and I am surprised he believes that the Government will even need to return to the House with another such motion. It is pretty comprehensive, yet we know nothing of the figures. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) asked why we are approving the sums that we are, because they must give bankrupt banks the ability to pay bonuses they would otherwise not be able to pay. Last Thursday, the Financial Times set out the Obama programme for convincing the public why the measures being sought through Congress, which will sit at weekends if necessary to discuss them, should apply to the banks. That programme rests on a condition similar to the one that the hon. Gentleman set out.

Yet this Government have set as their condition the holding of an investigation, which will dribble on until the end of time. How can people be confident that the Government know what they are doing, are on the side of the people and can countenance the payment of such sums? Where in their scheme is correction provided for? The Minister must say more about that. It cannot be reasonable to assume that the House will dance to a tune that it does not even understand. The resolution opens our imaginations to the thought that the Government are as lost as all of us. In fact, they are more lost, as they cannot put a sum on anything.

Does my hon. Friend accept that some of us would be very concerned if we did not put down a marker of protest about this? We would prefer to vote against the money resolution, even though we understand that certain undertakings may have been given.

I want to see Parliament at the centre of what this country decides in relation to the Executive. That has happened throughout our history, and we are elected to ask the Executive for certain informations. We have been hollowed out in the great debate that faces each of our constituents, and we have not even had proper debates on the Government’s economic conduct. They do not want to come to the House to discuss that; they just send a little message, a three-minute speech by the Minister explaining why it is essential that we should bounce along to their drumbeat.

No, no—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) that we should oppose the motion so that the Government take seriously the intent of Parliament. Each one of us must justify such vast sums, which could bankrupt the nation. The bankruptcy of countries is not unknown in history. When one hears of money simply being thrown around, without ascertaining or establishing conditions, it makes one feel that the Government do not know what they are doing apart from pushing money into the economy somehow. We need to be more intelligent about the matter, and so do the Government.

The Executive are trying to achieve what all hon. Members want—the stabilisation of an economic crisis and beginning of life again. However, that should be done in partnership, so we should oppose the motion.

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), who speaks with immense sense and with whom I entirely agree.

I had the great pleasure of attending every Committee sitting, where the Economic Secretary, who is also at the Dispatch Box today, would spend five, 10 or 15 minutes discussing some sentence in the Bill. However, when it comes to spending so much money that we do not even know the size of the sum, with the danger of bankrupting the British economy, we get a very short speech. I do not believe for one moment that that was by the Minister’s design—I think he was sat on from on high. The theory is, “Whatever happens, let’s not discuss the Bill but simply get it through quietly; let’s spend billions and billions of pounds, and nobody will notice.” I spoke in a debate in which we spent £42 billion in 90 minutes. The larger the amount of money, the less time we have to discuss it.

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Economic Secretary is mute on the matter because he does not know the figure?

I am grateful for the intervention because I intend to be brief to allow the Economic Secretary time to say at least something about the matter. Perhaps he has no idea about the figure, but he has got to do better. He must come to the Dispatch Box and explain the money resolution in greater detail, otherwise I will not support it. I know that that creates some difficulty for my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban). He made many of the points that hon. Members of all parties have raised, but he wants to get the Bill through, as we all do. However, if we continue to allow the Government to railroad Parliament, they will be encouraged to do it again and again.

Will my hon. Friend take into account the fact that our presence here today to discuss the money resolution must be in accordance with the rules laid down in “Erskine May” and in Standing Orders? We are discussing a proposal for new or increased expenditure, which is not already covered by legislative authorisation. We are therefore in a de novo situation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), and my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) and for Gosport (Sir Peter Viggers) have already shown that there is deep concern about the fact that the amount is new and increased, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham said, its implications are stupendous.

My hon. Friend speaks with great clarity and is, of course, correct. Time and again, the Executive have performed the same trick. They add things to Bills late in their passage. In this case, they are adding the most massive sum of money.

I realise that I am short of time if I want the Economic Secretary to speak again, and he must make it clear whether we are considering approving expenditure of not only billions but trillions. Will that be incorporated into the Government’s balance sheet? If so, we will be a little country run by a big bank. The Economic Secretary must be clear: will the money be consolidated or not?

The proposal that the Government have put before us is profoundly worrying. It would allow an unlimited amount of expenditure, by authorising

“the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure of the Secretary of State in respect of, or in connection with, giving financial assistance to or in respect of a bank or other financial institution”.

That is, in fact, a blank cheque.

In January, the Prime Minister expressed surprise and anger that the Royal Bank of Scotland had invested in derivatives—“invested” being a pejorative—and that it had become necessary to write off £2.5 billion of taxpayers’ money, which was irrecoverable from a Russian oligarch. What on earth are we doing surrendering taxpayers’ hard-earned money to a Russian? The Prime Minister expressed anger, but how much more angry should we be that he spent taxpayers’ money on that basis and that he then expressed surprise?

The only way ahead must surely be to tie down the Government, so that they are not so profligate in the expenditure of our money, and to reject the motion. Having said that, I was present when my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) gave an undertaking that the Bill would go through with our support in February, and on that basis I will not be voting against it.

With the leave of the House, I would like to respond to some of the points that have been raised in this debate, although I appreciate that this gives hon. Members an opportunity to range relatively widely over Government expenditure.

A number of the issues could have been raised in connection with the money resolution on 14 October, which was passed without debate. Indeed, hon. Members will be aware of the convention with regard to money resolutions. Like the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), I, too, am old-fashioned.

Will the Minister give way?

If the hon. Gentleman will let me reply first, I will then give way.

I am old-fashioned enough to believe that a money resolution is about providing the cover for expenditure. We are not debating or voting on the expenditure itself. That will happen through the normal process of supply estimates and votes where appropriate. There will be opportunities to discuss the expenditure that the Government are committed to, but we are asking for cover for expenditure, just as we do for other Bills in normal circumstances.

Will the Minister give way?

Let me make just a little more progress and answer some of the substantive points that have been made. Then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

The schemes covered by the resolution will be subject to the standard arrangements for parliamentary control and for the reporting of expenditure to Committees as appropriate. The Bill makes that happen and will also put in place additional requirements, in line with amendments made in the other place. Hon. Members will be aware that amendments made in the other place imposed a requirement on the Government to report on expenditure and liabilities made or assumed under the Bill. We have accepted the principle behind that amendment and we will debate it in due course, so there will be no lack of transparency on the Government’s part.

Does the Minister not understand his and my constituents’ bewilderment that we should be giving the banks a blank cheque, as other hon. Members have said? We understand the gravity of the situation but, at the same time, he and the Prime Minister are not insisting that bonuses should not be paid. I ask him again: will he cut away the nonsense about a review and say, “It shall not happen”?

I hear what my hon. Friend says. We all share the public outrage about bonuses that are rewards for failure. Let me say to him that it is not a blank cheque that we are asking people to support today; it is a money resolution that is prepared in the normal way. There will be scrutiny through estimates and votes in the normal way. It is also important to recognise that there are a number of measures in the Bill that are important to people and businesses in his constituency. That is why I hope he will not want to vote against the money resolution, because not passing it would prevent people and businesses in his constituency from receiving substantial support.

Will the Minister give way?

In a moment. I just want to address the point about contingent liabilities.

As hon. Members will be aware, Departments are required to note contingent liabilities in their annual resource accounts. In exceptional circumstances, this may be done confidentially to the Chairs of the Public Accounts Committee and departmental Select Committees. In a moment, I hope we will go on to discuss the transparency and reporting amendment that I have tabled in response to the amendment made in the Lords. It proposes six-monthly reporting requirements. We are not hiding away from wanting to report on our liabilities and the actions that we are taking on this matter; we want to get it right, but we also want to do whatever it takes to maintain stability and support for the economy in this difficult time.

I am pleased with the cross-party consensus that we have had during the passage of the Bill, and I ask hon. Members seriously to consider that there is a difference between a money resolution that provides cover for expenditure and a debate on the expenditure itself, which will be held in the normal way.

Will the Minister tell the House how much money we are talking about for this year and next, under this money resolution and the subsequent resolutions?

We have explained this, in our previous statements to the House on bank recapitalisation, and in our announcements on the asset purchase scheme. We also explained in detail the fact that we were providing £10 billion in contingent liabilities for supporting the working capital scheme, which will allow £20 billion of lending. However, we do not know what the exact figures will be because, in many cases, we are providing loan guarantees, and our final liabilities will depend on the ability of companies to get through the recession and on whether those guarantees are called. The sooner we act, and the sooner we can get more support to businesses, the more likely the businesses will be to survive at this time—

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that privilege is involved in Lords amendments 20, 51 to 53, 59 and 75 to 84. If the House agrees to any of these amendments, I shall ensure that the appropriate entry is made in the Journal.

After Clause 226

Transparency: financial assistance

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 83.

With this it will be convenient to take the following: Government amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 83.

Lords amendments 75 to 82.

Before addressing in detail the amendments made in the other place and the amendment the Government are now proposing, it might help if I summarise the purpose and history of clauses 228 and 229 in the latest print of the Bill. Their purpose is to put the use of public money in the proposed bank resolution arrangements, or in the provision of financial assistance to banks and their customers more generally, on to a proper statutory footing. Clause 228 does that by providing the statutory cover for expenditure in Supply estimates. That is required under a long-established convention, commonly called the PAC concordat of 1932, that there should always be specific enabling legislation to enable the finance for a new service to be provided from public funds. We amended the clause in Committee in this House to give statutory cover for financial assistance where the institution concerned was not a UK deposit taker or a financial institution that was not a deposit taker—for example, a bank holding company—but further issues came to light that had to be dealt with by Government amendments in the other place. I briefly commented on them in the money resolution debate, and I shall turn to them shortly.

Clause 229 provides statutory cover for drawing money from the national loans fund to make loans urgently where that is necessary to protect financial stability. We also amended the clause in Committee to extend the types of person to whom loans could be given to cover financial institutions other than UK deposit takers. I shall also talk about the Government amendments made in the other place after discussing clause 230. This clause, the result of the passing of amendment 83 in the other place, provides for more rapid detailed reporting of financial assistance given to banks, financial institutions and their customers. It provides for quarterly reporting of expenditure, and of guarantees and similar commitments that might result in expenditure, met with money voted by Parliament under the authority of clause 228(1). Clause 230 also provides for the same reporting arrangements for loans made under clause 229. It requires the Treasury to lay sufficiently detailed reports before both Houses of Parliament, but allows for the disclosure of the information to be delayed as long as there is a public interest in not disclosing it.

The Government have always appreciated the concerns that many people have about transparency and reporting. Those are important issues for the whole Bill, and not just in relation to public expenditure, and we discussed them at great length in Committee and they were discussed at great length in the other place. The Government’s view is that it is necessary to balance the desirable objective of transparency against the need for confidentiality in a number of contexts. There will be cases where action to tackle financial crisis, taken under the Bill or otherwise, can be effective only if it can be kept confidential.

If we approve the Bill as it stands, is there a danger that because there will no longer be a weekly report from the Bank of England, some of this assistance could be provided on the Bank of England’s balance sheet to avoid all scrutiny and accountability?

I shall discuss those points, but basically the answer is that we have the balance right in what we are proposing today.

The right hon. Gentleman will remember that there were concerns about this precise issue when the news about Northern Rock first broke. There were concerns that the provision of financial assistance by the Bank of England had to be disclosed by the recipient firm—as is the case for listed companies—under Financial Services Authority rules. There were also concerns about the way in which the publication of the weekly Bank of England return could be used to work out that such support was being given. Indeed, clause 244, which removes the obligation on the Bank to produce a weekly return—the right hon. Gentleman referred to that—was included in the Bill precisely because of those concerns.

So there must be a balance between the need for transparency and the need to protect confidentiality where it is clearly in the public interest to do so. The Government feel that the original clause 230, although a noble effort, does not quite get the balance right. We simply feel that there is too big a risk that it could be possible to identify the beneficiaries of financial assistance under some schemes or the amounts that they could receive. I am sure the House will appreciate the risk, therefore, of damaging speculation about the identity of the institution concerned. That could be bad for confidence and it could even lead to the kind of situation that we are all trying to avoid.

These issues were debated in Committee in another place, and the version of the clause accepted on Report in the other place has gone some way to recognising these difficulties. For example, clause 230 does allow the Treasury some leeway to delay the disclosure when it is in the public interest to do so—for as long as that remains the case. That is sensible, but because of the risks and concerns that I have just described, the Government might well end up relying on this public interest exemption rather too often.

That is bad for two reasons. The first is that it increases the chance that the Government may not be able to make a disclosure—that is clearly bad for transparency and we ideally want to avoid it. The second is that the frequent delay or omission of information could, itself, lead to destabilising and damaging speculation of the kind that we all want to avoid. So we have been considering ways in which regular reports of the kind provided for by clause 230 could be made while minimising the problems that I have described.

Does the Minister accept that normally the money resolution authorises, in general terms, the expenditure and that subsequently, as he said, there is an estimate, but it is not, in itself, a reason for accepting the money resolution? Does he also understand that much of the reason for the Bill’s being discussed and voted upon by an unelected Chamber—the other place—is the fact that the Government imposed restrictions on the amount of debate to take place in this House and abrogated to the upper House matters that should properly be dealt with only in this House, because we are elected on behalf of the people?

Unfortunately, I do not agree with hon. Gentleman. Exceptional events have been taking place in money markets worldwide, and the Government have had to act quickly to ensure financial stability. We did that through recapitalisation, and the authorisation for that was in the money resolution that we passed in October. We have had to take further action since, and we need legislative cover for the action that we have taken, which is why we were discussing the money resolution. But we also want to ensure transparency and accountability to Parliament. I share with the hon. Gentleman the strong view that accountability for these matters should be to this House, and we are trying to achieve a reasonable balance between the need for transparency and the need for confidentiality. That is why we have tabled an amendment containing a new clause to take the place of clause 230.

The new clause would provide that reports should be submitted half-yearly rather than quarterly. In itself, that would significantly reduce the risk of identification as expenditure incurred or guarantees given over a longer period would be covered in any one report. The new clause would require the Treasury to ensure that individual recipients and the amounts that they have been paid or guaranteed cannot be identified. That will usually mean aggregation, and we expect that in practice each scheme would be reported on separately, but that, if necessary, data on schemes could be aggregated up to the level of the sponsoring department. The Government believe that that is the intention behind subsection (2) when taken with the recognition of the public interest in subsection (3), and our amendments are, therefore, in line with the clause as it stands, but make improvements in clarity and technical effect.

There are also some smaller points on which the Government propose changes to clause 230. First, the amendment provides that the reports should not include the loans made under clause 229. A Government amendment in the other place, which we will come to shortly, made the loans from the national loans fund under clause 229, which can also only be made when needed urgently to protect financial stability, subject to an ad hoc reporting procedure similar to that provided in clause 228 when money is taken directly from the Consolidated Fund in urgent cases. But there is no mechanism analogous to estimates for approving loans from the national loans fund, so there is no need to include them in reports under clause 230. Of course, those payments and loans will be included in the annual accounts of the national loans fund.

Finally, the amendment provides for reports to be laid only before the House of Commons. That is entirely normal, and follows the usual processes for reporting on public expenditure, in line with long established constitutional precedents in relation to public finances. As set out each year in the Queen’s Speech, Supply estimates for the public services are laid before this House only. The reports that this amendment will introduce relate to money voted in those estimates, and it is proper, therefore, that they should be formally laid in this House. But the reports will of course be published so copies will be available to members of both Houses—and indeed the general public—in the normal way.

I hope that the House will agree that these proposals strike the right balance between the objective of transparency and the need for the appropriate level of confidentiality. I hope that the additional arguments that I have been able to make will enable those who expressed concerns in the debate on the money resolution to be reassured about the accountability mechanisms that will be built into the process.

My hon. Friend makes an important point. There is great outrage about bonuses being paid by banks, and it is felt that we should do more about that, given the amount of money being put into the banking system. The key is transparency. While I understand the thrust of the amendments, there is a conflict between transparency and the confidentiality that is needed for the reasons that my hon. Friend has outlined. Does he agree that we must make it clear to our constituents that transparency is a key part of the proposals?

I agree strongly: it is right that we should be as transparent as we reasonably can, while recognising that certain public policy objectives require some degree of confidentiality. The last thing that we would want to do is create a run on a financial institution by being too transparent and disclosing problems when by taking action as we propose, we could solve such problems.

I remember the debates in Committee over this point. One of the dangers of not having transparency is that someone might invest in an organisation, only to lose a lot of money later because it went down, and they would not have known that the Government had been bailing it out in between those times. However, I want to ask the Minister whether we will have an extraordinary Supply day to cover the estimates that we have just approved in the money resolution. If so, will he guarantee that the time allowed for that will not be three hours but will be enough to ensure that the subject is properly debated?

I cannot speak for the business managers of the House, obviously. However, as part of the normal reporting procedures there will be an opportunity to debate these matters. The hon. Gentleman has raised his point and he will have ample opportunities to raise the Government’s programmes in debates on the Floor of the House and in Westminster Hall.

May I put three examples to my hon. Friend? Let us say that the Bank of England were to start buying Government debt; that the Treasury were to start issuing debt directly to businesses, institutions or arms of local government; or that the Government were to decide that they had to support credit insurers and created a new credit insurance facility in order to keep business moving. Those matters would all be covered by this new clause. How would Parliament be kept informed about these matters?

As a Government, we always want to be open and transparent. As an experienced Member of this House, my hon. Friend will know that when we make major decisions as a Government it is normal practice that we report them to Parliament either through an oral statement or a written ministerial statement. The normal financial accountability mechanisms will be considered and will be debated in due course. I assure him that the Government want to be absolutely clear about what we are doing and to explain why we are taking action. We think that it is vital that we should continue to do all we can to ensure the stability of the financial system in the UK. That is why the announcements that the Chancellor made in an oral statement to the House a few Mondays ago showed the normal practice that we would follow. That does not negate the need for other reporting mechanisms to be put in place. As I outlined earlier, the estimates and votes process is long established in this House and provides a means of financial accountability.

Let me turn to Lords amendments 75 to 80, which provide statutory cover for expenditure incurred in connection with schemes run by Departments other than the Treasury. They do that by providing statutory cover for schemes where the financial assistance being provided will both facilitate the activities of the bank or financial institution and provide a benefit to a third party, such as customers of banks or other financial institutions, or to the wider economy. Expenditure incurred in connection with schemes such as the home owners mortgage support scheme announced by the Prime Minister on 3 December and the working capital scheme that I announced to the House on 14 January in my capacity as Under-Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform are covered by the provisions.

Lords amendment 81 addresses a different issue regarding the provision of financial assistance. As the House will know, the Treasury has made a number of arrangements to support the UK banking sector. They include the credit guarantee scheme for new inter-bank lending introduced in October 2008, as well as the asset protection scheme and guarantee scheme for asset-backed security that were announced on Monday 19 January. Those schemes involve the provision of guarantees or similar financial commitments by the Treasury. Although we hope that there will be no need to make any payments, the Treasury must be in a position to settle promptly any liabilities that arise. Normally, that would be effected by securing parliamentary approval for an estimate, but clearly a need for expenditure might arise at any time, including during a recess when estimates could not be obtained. The amendment addresses that by providing for direct access to the consolidated fund without an estimate in cases where the funds are required urgently. It also provides for parliamentary reporting with suitable safeguards in respect of commercial confidentiality and the maintenance of market confidence.

Does that not undo what the Minister said earlier in the debate? He said that there would always be an estimate so that the House could decide whether or not to approve the expenditure of money, but it appears that money can be spent without any approval during a recess. I assume that we will not be able to come back afterwards and unspend it, so did not what we voted on earlier in fact commit us to spending it?

No, the money resolution that we voted on earlier will not do what the hon. Gentleman suggests. Where funds are needed urgently and it is not possible to have estimates, that money can be provided. However, it will still be subject to the same accountability systems when Parliament returns after a recess.

Will the guarantee scheme apply only to British banks lending to British people and companies, or will it apply also to foreign loans and banks?

The working capital scheme that is being progressed at the moment relates only to UK banks. We are discussing the scheme with the major UK banks, but we are not in conversation with foreign banks about it.

May I follow that up? My hon. Friend has made it clear that the facility will be available only to UK banks, but an important point that should not be overlooked is that much of the exposure that will be supported could be outside the UK. In fact, I can think of one or two big financial institutions that will carry most of their exposure outside the UK. Is that also covered by the loan facility?

We are trying, through the working capital scheme, to progress our discussions with UK banks about their credit lines to UK companies. The policy intention is not that the Government should underwrite the loans of non-UK companies or investments made by UK companies in assets outside the UK. We need to be clear that the purpose of the working capital scheme is to help UK companies that need access to credit. Some have had their credit lines withdrawn, and the Government want to give a reassurance that credit will be there in the future. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the policy is UK focused and that the intention is not to fund projects internationally in the way that he describes.

Finally, I turn to amendment 82 to clause 229. Clause 229 provides for loans to be made urgently from the national loans fund where that is necessary to protect financial stability. Of course, loans can be made with money voted by Parliament but, again, an estimate will have to be obtained first. However, loans can be provided from the national loans fund without an estimate, provided that the relevant requirements are met. That means that they can be used in urgent cases for which no estimate is available.

After further reflection, the Government felt that the same kind of reporting arrangements that apply to the urgent payments under clause 228(5) should also apply to individual urgent loans under clause 229. As I have just explained, Lords amendment 82 does that with the same kind of anonymity and public interest conditions as those used in subsections (6) and (7) of clause 228.

These Lords amendments are detailed. For what we believe are good reasons, the Government disagree with one of them, although we accept its general principle and thrust. We think that the balance between transparency and confidentiality that their lordships proposed needs to be changed slightly, and I have explained our thinking. I hope that the House will agree to our amendment in due course.

I will deal with the amendments in a different order from the Minister and start off with Lords amendment 79, which is important. It triggered much of the debate that we had on the money resolution, in the sense that it would broaden the way in which the Government can use public money to support the banking sector or other financial institutions. When we debated clause 225 in Committee, it was more narrowly focused, but the amendment would widen its scope. I want to test with the Minister my understanding of how broad the amendment is in practice.

My understanding is that the Bank of England’s asset purchase facility would fall within the ambit of the clause, because the scheme permits the Bank to purchase commercial paper, and that indirectly benefits banks by reducing the potential demand for funding, so any financial commitment that arises from the asset purchase scheme would be covered by Lords amendment 79. The Minister mentioned Lords amendment 81; I am trying to understand where the Government have broadened the nature of the assistance that can be given. I am thinking of how new subsection (1A)(a) and (b)—particularly (b)—which is inserted into clause 225 by Lords amendment 79, will relate to a range of schemes. I assume that the funding package for the motor industry that the Minister announced in the House last month would come within the ambit of new subsection (1A)(b).

I wonder if I might push the Minister a bit further to see how elastic the provision is. Last week, at the CBI’s manufacturing dinner, Lord Mandelson floated the idea of a scrappage allowance. The intention was that it would restart car purchases in the UK by encouraging people to trade in an old car for a new car. A number of people in the industry proposed the idea. I would have thought that it was within the realms of the Government’s creativity to claim that any expenditure on such a scheme would be covered by the subsection, because new subsection (1A)(b)(iii) refers to

“its effect on a particular industry or sector of the economy”.

Clearly, a scrappage allowance would stimulate the demand for consumer credit, kick-start the motoring sector and potentially reduce the demand for working capital finance from the banks. That may seem a far-fetched example of a scheme that could fall within the scope of the amendment, but it is not clear how Lords amendment 79 would be applied, or what schemes would fall within its remit. I would be grateful if the Minister clarified that.

When the clause was originally discussed in Committee, it referred just to banks. An amendment was made in Committee to extend coverage to other financial institutions, so arguably under the clause financial support could be provided to insurers, fund managers and independent financial advisers—a whole gamut of financial institutions. It would be down to the Government to determine which financial institutions could benefit.

I again ask the Minister about the scope of the provision. If the Government decided to fund free contents insurance for tenants in the social rented sector, it would clearly help the insurance sector. Would that be covered by Lords amendment 79? It would be helpful for the Minister to give us an idea of the areas that he believes fall within the scope of the amendment before the House decides to accept it. Clearly, as was demonstrated earlier, there is widespread concern across the House about the potential level of financial assistance and the commitments to be undertaken by taxpayers that could flow from the amendments.

Does my hon. Friend share my reading of the amendments? Under Lords amendment 82, if the Treasury decided that it did not want to report to the House or anyone else, it need never tell us anything about the amount paid. The amendments state that it may dispense with the requirement, which is extremely worrying.

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. My interpretation is that although at the time the Government might decide for reasons of confidentiality not to lay a report before Parliament, that would be swept up in what was Lords amendment 83, which we pressed in the Lords. I hope that would be covered in the new amendment tabled by the Government in lieu, so there would be a report. It may not be as timely as we would like, but there would be reporting at six-monthly intervals.

The Minister made an important point about the balance to be struck between confidentiality and public scrutiny. Clearly, the transparency of information provided was a barrier to giving covert assistance to Northern Rock. We need to have that debate in mind, but I hope that the six-monthly reporting will act as a sweeper, so to speak, to pick up all those instances where financial assistance has been given but no report has been laid before Parliament.

When the Government decided, in the first phase of the bank bail-out, to take stakes in RBS, what was then Lloyds TSB and HBOS, we had a debate on the Floor of the House in which the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and my hon. Friends the Members for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) and for Wellingborough participated. Specific approval was given for an estimate to pay for that investment. Will we have the same opportunity to vote on the elements set out in the second bail-out package? It was not clear from the Minister’s remarks whether we would have a specific vote on those elements, or whether they would go through the normal estimates procedure, where individual items are not voted on.

Not only have we seen the second phase of the bank bail-out, but money has been lent to the financial services compensation scheme in respect of the rescue of the Icelandic banks in the UK, and we should ensure proper scrutiny of that in the House. I would welcome greater clarity from this Minister as to how items would be voted on and whether there would be stand-alone debates on the various aspects of financial assistance envisaged in Lords amendment 79.

The Minister also drew the House’s attention to the words “too urgent” in Lords amendment 81, which relate to when there was a pressing need to provide money from the Consolidated Fund, the issue being whether money could be granted before there was a vote on it. He gave the specific example of there being a crisis during a recess and Ministers having to act urgently without the approval of the House. Will he confirm that when the House is sitting, the Government’s first preference will be to go through the estimates procedure, rather than rely on the powers set out in Lords amendment 81?

Lords amendment 83 was tabled by my noble Friend Baroness Noakes and Lord Turnbull in the other place. One of the important themes in the debate is transparency and understanding the scale of the taxpayers’ liability. We touched on that in different contexts during our debates on the Bill in this place. I felt at times that there was a bias towards secrecy as a way of enhancing financial stability, so I welcome the increased level of scrutiny that comes from the amendments made in the other place. It is important that the tripartite authorities are accountable to Parliament and others for the use of their powers under the Bill. The report envisaged in Lords amendment 83 went a long way towards increasing that transparency. It set out the requirement for a quarterly report to be made to Parliament on sums actually and potentially committed under the financial assistance powers in clauses 228 and 229.

During our earlier debate on the money resolution, I set out a number of the schemes that the Government have announced in the past three or four months, and I have no intention of repeating them. Clearly, however, there is a range of schemes that involve significant financial commitments. I have talked about the asset protection scheme; one estimate this weekend suggested an amount of up to £400 billion. The Minister referred to the working capital scheme, and there is the scheme proposed by Sir James Crosby in relation to asset-backed securities. There is also the asset purchase facility, under which the Bank of England has been authorised to acquire commercial paper. So there is a range of schemes with significant price tags. It is important that taxpayers should understand the extent to which they are exposed to the financial assistance given under the schemes, and that Parliament and the taxpayer should hold the Government to account for the money involved in them.

One of the points made in the other place was that the schemes are put forward by a range of Departments: the Treasury is responsible for some, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform for others and the Department for Communities and Local Government for the homeowners’ scheme. It is important that the Treasury acts as the focal point for drawing the schemes together and ensuring that a proper report is made to Parliament.