What we had to face in the second part of the year was a Banking Crisis caused by the events in the Middle East.

We have seen from the secondary Banking Crisis that the system did not work very well because there was not a sufficiently close connection with the Bank as the supervisory authority for the four clearing banks and all the other institutions.

In his book "Free to Choose" he not only points out that the Banking Crisis in the 1930s in the United States brought about the dis appearance of thousands of banks but adds:the total stock of money showed an equally drastic decline.

There is a Banking Crisis.

He has been replaced by a personal favourite of the Prime Minister's, who told us within a week of his appointment that the Banking Crisis was over, if it had ever existed.

They need to be put firmly at the top of the agenda if the IMF is to justify the increase in resources that we are giving it, and 636 certainly if it is to lead the negotiations needed to set up a more viable long-term solution to the problems of the Banking Crisis.

The Economic Secretary acknowledged what the Committee said about the Banking Crisis.

No, it was caused by doubts about whether the United States could keep up its growth and by the Banking Crisis in Ohio.

In a financial climate like that, any Chancellor who knew what he was doing would have decided to keep an eye on the little banks in case there was Another Banking Crisis.

A Banking Crisis might result in a charge of 25p for every withdrawal, which will mean that the low paid will suffer a wage reduction.

Mr. Wray: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the effects for the British financial system of the Banking Crisis and the collapse of the savings and loans companies of the United States of America.

Whereas a few years ago when one made this type of suggestion the banks wrung their hands and said, "We must be careful not to set off a Banking Crisis," they have since set aside, and organised their structural internal funds to cope with, bad debts.

As hon. Members have said, we are facing a Serious Banking Crisis and some knock-on questions should be examined.

When there was a Banking Crisis in the early 1970s, the last Labour Government instituted a series of inquiries.

Members may recollect that that was followed by the 1974 Banking Crisis and the Bank of England's "lifeboat" to rescue a total systemic threat to our banking system.

He understood what happened during the 1974 Banking Crisis: that crisis was potentially even more serious than the Equitable Life saga facing us now, but a solution was found and mutual responsibility was accepted by Government and the private sector.

In trying to understand our current economic problems and, in particular, the Banking Crisis, I have read newspapers and journals fairly carefully and I have been much helped by articles such as that by the noble Lord, Lord Rees-Mogg, which has already been referred to.

The question has to be asked: why was Northern Rock not temporarily taken into public ownership - not back into public ownership; it was never in public ownership - as was done in the secondary Banking Crisis in 1974, in order to avoid a run on the bank and retain depositors' confidence without such a colossal haemorrhage of public funds?

To provide some credentials for this debate, I was a junior Minister at the Treasury when BCCI - the Bank of Credit and Commerce International - was closed and went under and when we had a Banking Crisis.

At the risk of incurring some displeasure in my good friend the shadow Chancellor - perhaps the Financial Secretary will convey this sentiment - I expect that the Chancellor's recent decisions were the most difficult that he will ever have to make as Chancellor, unless he has Another Banking Crisis on his hands in the near future, which we all seriously hope he does not.

This is a supposedly responsible lender in the middle of a Banking Crisis, dependent on loans from the Government.

We are very much in the middle of a Banking Crisis that is without precedent -certainly in my lifetime and probably for most of the last century.

There has been a Banking Crisis every 10 years since I came here, and there was one in the 10 years before that.

The Swedish had Their Banking Crisis in 1991, when they nationalised the biggest bank in Sweden, which is still partly publicly owned today, 16 years later.

Otherwise, there could be dangerous delays if a Banking Crisis did hit, with information having to be exchanged between the two regulators; and there might be gaps in each regulator's view of the banking sector at a crucial time, when early regulatory action might have spared a worse problem".

There was a Banking Crisis in Sweden in 1991 and the state intervened.

They say that it is all being caused by the credit crunch, but scarcely ever go on to acknowledge that they themselves are solely responsible for the credit crunch -the Banking Crisis that we face.

The Governor of the Bank of England pointed out - again, this is supported by the chairman of the FSA - that more work needed to be done on the arrangements for handling a Banking Crisis.

The international Banking Crisis has been created almost entirely - certainly 99 per cent.

We have heard about the impact of the Banking Crisis on the housing market, and there have been some powerful speeches about those who face repossession and those who cannot afford to make their mortgage payments.

The Present Banking Crisis was inevitable.

The purpose of that particular clause of the banking Bill is to make sure that there is adequate and full financial protection for depositors in the event of a Banking Crisis or failure.

It is perfectly sensible, good stuff, but it does not begin to address the fundamental underlying causes of the Banking Crisis.

He will accept that there have been considerable delays in bringing it forward at a time of increased and increasing concern, among the banks and individual depositors, about the scale of the Banking Crisis.

All of us need to work together to stop Britain sliding from a Banking Crisis into a deep recession.

He asked whether the Current Banking Crisis raised new issues that we need to address during the passage of the Bill, not least because there seems to be an assumption in some quarters that the money sitting in the banks at the moment is gathering dust on a shelf and not being used for any purpose at all, and that it could therefore be utilised for good causes without any other consequences.

We cannot allow the Ongoing Banking Crisis to dominate everything we do in our political lives, because the world goes on.

At the moment, many companies that are well run have severe credit problems because of the Banking Crisis, in which the banks are not lending to each other, let alone to companies.

I went through the secondary Banking Crisis in the 1970s as a director of a merchant bank, and I am now on the Treasury Committee, having previously been a Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Treasury.

This Banking Crisis followed a severe oil price shock in the summer, with the price of oil reaching $150 a barrel.

Given the Current Banking Crisis, which was made considerably worse by that light touch, do the Government consider that the time has come to give new instructions to the FSA?

My Lords, we, too, are grateful to the noble Lord for coming to the House for the third time in a week to repeat a Statement on the Banking Crisis.

In the same way, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have been active in the G7 and have been very concerned that the Americans fully understand the nature of the British response to the Banking Crisis and the importance of the Americans following a strategy.

Does the Chancellor accept that because of the Banking Crisis, many of my constituents are deeply anxious about their financial future?

Giving the Government the power to deal with a Banking Crisis is one thing, but preventing such a crisis is quite another.

I welcome the introduction of the Bill, and the cross-party approach to the measures to deal with the Banking Crisis.

I appreciate that this is not a debate on the Current Banking Crisis, so I will try to speak within the bounds of the Bill before us.

This Banking Crisis did not emerge from old-fashioned banking at all; it emerged from the kind of banking, known in the trade as "originate to distribute", that has developed in recent years, whereby banks put together packages of securities and then pass them on to each other in collateralised debt obligations, or CDOs, which have proliferated and become far more complicated.

The Government's response to the Banking Crisis has included a backstop and I wonder whether the Minister and his Department should make it clear that the same backstop will be there for local authorities as well.

There has been broad cross-party consensus, both here and in another place, on the Government's response to the Banking Crisis.

Perhaps I may also say how pleased I am that we will have the benefit of his skills and talents in charge of this very important ministry, which will add to the tremendous skills already being displayed by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in tackling the Banking Crisis that we are facing.

At that time the solution to the Banking Crisis was being taken along institution by institution.

I hope that no one, whatever their political affiliation, will be tempted to play politics with the Banking Crisis in order to make out that things are worse than they are, because that will help no one.

Surely a time of Banking Crisis, when more and more of our constituents are looking to safe deposits and the Post Office and National Savings, is not the time to threaten the future of the Post Office card account.

May I thank my right hon. Friend for his active involvement in the Banking Crisis?

May I thank my hon. Friend for his active involvement in the Banking Crisis?

The Chancellor, along with the Governor of the Bank of England and the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, has kindly agreed to come along to the Treasury Committee's Banking Crisis inquiry on Monday.

One consequence of the Banking Crisis is that there will be fewer independent high street banks and competition will be reduced.

The second way this recession is perhaps different from other recessions since the war is that it has been accompanied by a very Serious Banking Crisis indeed; more serious than the previous secondary banking crisis and probably the most serous since the 1920s and the 1930s.

The second way this recession is perhaps different from other recessions since the war is that it has been accompanied by a very serious Banking Crisis indeed; more serious than the previous secondary banking crisis and probably the most serous since the 1920s and the 1930s.

The UK and Us Governments have taken decisive action to deal with the Banking Crisis and it is clear that the action has had an impact.

Quite rightly over the past few months, the media have reported extensively on the Banking Crisis in the financial news.

We are having this debate because of loss of confidence caused by the collapse in wholesale money markets, leading to a Banking Crisis.

Up to £200 million given by the public to charities has been frozen as a result of the Banking Crisis.

The Conservative party opposed all our measures on Northern Rock, and on the Banking Crisis and HBOS.

Will the Minister confirm that the inter-bank lending guarantee has failed to deliver the intended solution - to bring down LIBOR to the rate that existed before the Banking Crisis?

It is also crucial to offer people the hope that, in the process of settling the Banking Crisis in the way we have been debating, more will be done to try to offset the real damage being done to the rest of the economy.

Does she agree that at a time of Banking Crisis, when many of our constituents are very wary of trusting banks, the one thing that they can trust is the Post Office card account and National Savings?

We have recognised the environmental impact of climate change, we face a Banking Crisis and we will face an economic recession or, at least, a serious downturn.

What assurance can he give the House about the Government's commitment to coming forward with measures to support charities and voluntary organisations that are suffering liquidity and cash-flow problems as a result of the Banking Crisis?

That is not surprising, because the Statement was about the full-scale Banking Crisis, bringing in the G7, the IMF, Washington and whatever else.

At the root of the Banking Crisis was a failure by banks to manage risk, understand increasingly complex and opaque financial products and to make transparent a developing shadow banking system.

, to debate a specific and important matter that requires urgent attention, namely, the funding emergency which is mounting for charities like Naomi House as a result of the continuing Banking Crisis in Iceland.

The second point on which I agree with the hon. Member for Tatton - a point, indeed, that the Liberal Democrats have been making trenchantly - is that the Banking Crisis is almost certainly more important in terms of its impact on the economy, and we need to divert a good deal of attention to that problem.

I welcome intergovernmental action of any kind that will address the Banking Crisis that runs across Europe and the United States of America.

Let us suppose that there is no problem, but the bank then changes its approach and for several months this year it stalls and on the day of the news of the Banking Crisis, the account manager says he is leaving and the credit department says no to a request of ours.

Naomi House was badly hit in the recent Icelandic Banking Crisis.

The challenges we face are both immediate and more long term: resolving the Banking Crisis and putting our financial sector on a sound footing once again as we unravel the complex credit derivatives, credit default swaps and other obscure financial products that have contributed to the banks' problems; ensuring that the Government help people and businesses through the downturn as best we can; investing in vital infrastructure, vital research and development and new technologies and skills so that Britain is ready to meet the upturn with confidence and competitive strength; acting to ensure that the European Union's competition and state aid laws remain intact under the inevitable pressure they will come under; and ensuring that the EU's doughty trade commissioner sets her face against any attempts to roll back Europe's stand against protectionism while bringing the WTO's Doha round to a successful conclusion.

My party campaigned for an improvement to the small firms loan guarantee scheme which, for those of us who have experienced it, until This Banking Crisis seemed to produce significant bureaucratic delays among the banks in enabling individual SMEs to obtain the help that they needed.

The noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, asked whether I would confirm whether there would be an inquiry into the Banking Crisis.

The recession is not just affecting businesses through the Banking Crisis, but also because fewer people are choosing to holiday and to travel from abroad to seek work in the service industries.

The clear lesson of the 1930s is that the response to the Banking Crisis, not the crisis itself, will determine the depth and duration of this recession.

The Current Banking Crisis is affecting both cereal and livestock farmers who have hitherto used the overdraft for financing seed and stock until they are paid some months later.

I should like an acknowledgement from the Minister that if the knee-jerk reaction to the Banking Crisis is to be more and more regulation, the result will be more and more complicated documents from the legal profession and its clients.

We will conduct a Banking Crisis inquiry in the new year, when it will still be a big feature.

As the Crisis in Banking became a crisis in the real economy, I was doubly disappointed that they were using that, too, as a partisan lever.

I want briefly to take the House back to the late summer, when the Banking Crisis came to the fore in the public eye.

A further criticism of the Government is that when the Banking Crisis was at its peak, Ireland moved decisively to guarantee all deposits in its banking system, yet they delayed and dithered, which weakened the position further and brought HBOs and RBs to their knees.

I should like to talk briefly about the Banking Crisis.

I want to turn to the Banking Crisis and where we stand now.

I remember that there was a Banking Crisis when I left school in 1973 or 1974, when many secondary banks went out of business.

To do that, we have to know how This Banking Crisis came about.

As my noble friend Lord Newby remarked, the opportunity has been missed for viewing the Banking Crisis in the round and for careful reflection prior to legislative action.

After this, I wish to make some general comments on the Banking Crisis.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, observed that the Banking Crisis came upon us with few people forecasting it.

The Treasury Committee, of which I am a member, is looking at the issue, although we currently have other problems on our hands involving the Banking Crisis.

The FSA seems to have missed all the warning signs leading up to the Banking Crisis and all the warning signs in the mortgage market, and there has been a simple loss of confidence in its ability to deliver on its important role.

The Bill should also have given more support to maintaining the banking department of the Bank of England, which is being wound down, rather extraordinarily at this time of a Banking Crisis.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, chided that there is little in this Bill to deal with the causes of the Current Banking Crisis.

That is why it is unsatisfactory suddenly to lift a power from other legislation and use it in the context of the Banking Crisis.

One consequence that I can see arising as a result of the Banking Crisis is that banks will move to much simpler capital structures and will make much less use of innovative instruments than has been the case in the past.

When other Ministers were in charge, not so very long ago but before the Crisis in Banking, I recall Questions being asked in this House of the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Birmingham, whom we were delighted to see earlier this afternoon.

However, it may not be able to sustain this investment if its access to capital is choked off by the Banking Crisis.

At least as far as the Banking Crisis at the heart of the current problems is concerned, London is not just another city within a member state of the European Union.

I have to say to the right hon. Member that the problems is that when the Banking Crisis started, foreign banks that were operating in Britain reduced their capacity in Britain.

I have to say to him that the problems is that when the Banking Crisis started, foreign banks that were operating in Britain reduced their capacity in Britain.

In This Current Banking Crisis, the mutuals are essentially at a relative advantage because they do not have to worry about shareholder return.

Think how much Governments would welcome that money right now to help us with the Banking Crisis.

Can I put it to the Leader of the House that it is very important to have further urgent debates on the Banking Crisis?

A number of things have become clear during the Banking Crisis: there was mismanagement of the banks; many bankers were grossly over-rewarded; and those bankers had no sense of the broader community around them.

I return to the theme of spotting what has emerged in the past 18 months of the Banking Crisis but is not dealt with in this Bill.

That is so important, because the record seems to show that This Banking Crisis was started by an acronym.

We have had two, three or four proposals by the Government to deal with the Banking Crisis and to endeavour to improve the provision of credit in the UK economy.

It even suggests that it should be entrusted with sorting out the Banking Crisis.

I do not think anyone could seriously disagree with the proposition that a Major Banking Crisis would have a devastating effect on all our economies.

If we are to throw ourselves at market forces, we only have to think about the Banking Crisis to realise how that can go horribly wrong.

In relation to the last, there has also been an underlying instability, which is being cruelly exposed in the Current Banking Crisis.

In addition to the Banking Crisis there is a serious question mark over the credibility and stability of the pound.

However, if they believe that they must be able to ignore the code in order to achieve the flexibility they deem necessary to cope with the Banking Crisis, the least they should do is give a full and prompt explanation of why they have ignored the code.

My Lords, the Banking Bill which we are currently discussing in the House is very complex and detailed, but it does nothing to resolve the Current Banking Crisis, which lies at the heart of our economic problems.

This week, following on from the Banking Crisis, the impact of the recession took an equally ugly turn, with industrial unrest growing across the country.

With the Biggest Banking Crisis in our history, the good economy should be about setting up a people's bank, using the existing Post Office network.

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.

I was struck by the Economic Secretary's saying that the Government had acted quickly during the Banking Crisis.

We are going through a very serious world recession because of the Banking Crisis.

That sounds chillingly similar to the approach of his shadow Chancellor and, indeed, the Prime Minister ahead of the Banking Crisis, but I agree with Peter Kendall, the NFU president, who said that "when there is proven abuse of the voluntary approach, and it has been tried and tested and failed, that tells me that regulation is urgently required".

I guess that the Banking Crisis and the recession are the most important issues facing the country and Parliament today.

We had an interesting contribution fromthe hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price), who analysed the Banking Crisis and spoke about the prospect of a more local form of banking that is more publicly accountable.

That is why the Government have lost the confidence of the British people in their ability to deal with the recession that they helped create and the Banking Crisis that they failed to prevent.

I guess This Banking Crisis and the recession are the most important issues facing the country and Parliament today.

In some ways, because we do not have an indigenous banking sector to speak of, we have been shielded from the direct effects, but of course we are dealing with the indirect repercussions of the Banking Crisis.

We had an interesting contribution fromthe hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price), who analysed the Banking Crisis and spoke interestingly about the prospect of a more local form of banking that is more publicly accountable.

The prospect of the Minister imposing on UK vessels restrictions that do not apply to others gives one visions of reactions perhaps even more violent than anything we have had to the Current Banking Crisis.

What assessment has the Secretary of State made about the possibility of new nuclear build following the Banking Crisis?

I ask the Minister whether the Government have given any consideration to the possibility that the financial institutions that fund the ROSCOs, perhaps already affected by the Banking Crisis, might consider retreating to their core business, thus jeopardising the future purchase of rolling stock.

However, so far no one has actually lost their money in the Banking Crisis or storm that has hit our financial sector.

I do not think that I need to say that we are living through extremely uncertain times and that the Banking Crisis has made the past 18 months challenging for the industry, the Government and the general public.

The Current Banking Crisis is teaching us other lessons.

On a slightly more serious note, given the Banking Crisis of the past six months and the Government's reaction to it, what will be the Government's position on the Dutch Government's recent request of ABN AMRO?

When the Secretary of State meets representatives of the banks, will he remind them that the Committee is undertaking an inquiry into the Banking Crisis, and that we will be monitoring their lending agreements, under which transparency and value for money for the taxpayer are going to be the key requirements?

I am a member of the Treasury Committee and we have taken hours of evidence - first on Northern Rock and now on our latest inquiry into the Banking Crisis.

I have also had the privilege to sit on the Treasury Committee for the past four years and have heard the evidence of all those involved in the Banking Crisis.

Why were the Government so slow, timorous and ham-fisted about their handling of the Banking Crisis?

The parallels with the Banking Crisis are close.

He continues to argue that the recession is caused by a Banking Crisis that blew in from America on an otherwise sound economy.

The national debt amounted to half a trillion pounds even before the Banking Crisis began to bite, and that left nothing in the tank to stimulate the economy when the downturn came.

It estimates that when This Banking Crisis has finally resolved itself, total losses of about £200 billion will have to be absorbed by the British economy and, in effect, by the British taxpayer.

We know that that was generated in particular by a Banking Crisis and irresponsible actions.

The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that we are dealing with a Banking Crisis that has infected the rest of the economy, and if the Conservative party does not face up to that, it will never be able to solve the problem.

Today's Budget is set against the backdrop of a Banking Crisis that has in the past year become an economic crisis and is now a social crisis.

Will the right hon. Gentleman's Select Committee consider whether the needs of the wider industry could be addressed by taking it further into current developments and by bringing forward tax relief for new entrants, so that they can deal with the missing cash flow caused by the Banking Crisis?

Today's Budget is against the backdrop of a Banking Crisis that has in the past year become an economic crisis and is now a social crisis.

The banking practices mentioned by the Chancellor generated the highest yields, but they also generated a massive amount of risk, which ultimately led to a global Banking Crisis and which we are no longer prepared to accept.

A few weeks ago in the Chamber we debated the Government's response to the Banking Crisis and, in particular, one of the delusions that they wanted to maintain in their response.

We learned that during the Banking Crisis.

The levels of borrowing are simply unsustainable, as we have seen in the Banking Crisis, and are beginning to unwind, and as they do so we begin to see the damage that has been caused by our overdependence on those three sectors.

The excesses of the Current Banking Crisis have clearly demonstrated that mutually owned businesses are far more highly regarded than those that are shareholder-owned or shareholder-driven.

The Opposition make the wrong judgment today, as they did last year in the Banking Crisis.

The wider point that I was making is an important one: that across Europe, countries are being affected in the same way as we are because of the Banking Crisis that has spread into the wider economy.

In a Banking Crisis, we have to get lending going again, support the banks and strengthen confidence.

Given the eye-watering amounts that have been mentioned in connection with the Banking Crisis and so on, for most people these truly are uncharted waters, so they are extremely worried.

Only two months ago, when we were discussing the Banking Crisis with him in the Treasury Committee, I pressed the Chancellor on The Guardian's excellent articles and could not get him to say a word of praise about The Guardian.

Why have they not gone further in recognising the Banking Crisis, the credit crunch problems and the cash-flow problems by examining the industry's request to bring forward tax relief early for new entrants who do not have income at the moment, in order to encourage them to invest?

I am strongly of the view that it was policies made in Britain that made the Banking Crisis so bad here, and that the manic and deliberately perverse monetary policy that the Government and the authorities followed first created a bubble, then created a crash, and is now desperately trying to find a way to reflate and inflate from the crash site rather late in the day.

Industrial innovation and inward investment must be pursued with the same willingness to do whatever is needed that the Government showed at the height of the Banking Crisis.

The Government like to point out that in Canada, Italy, Japan and China, exports and manufacturing are falling faster than here, but those countries contributed nothing to the Banking Crisis; they did not have banking crises.

If you go back to the Great Banking Crisis of the 20th century -the accepting houses crisis of 1914, which Lloyd George sorted out very quickly, when the Governor of the Bank of England was asked how he knew which bonds were good and which were bad, the Governor of the Bank of England said, "I smell them".

The Post bank could restore confidence after the Banking Crisis.

If the Treasury wants to raise more money, as we undoubtedly need to do to pay the vast bills that have arisen from the Banking Crisis, it should look at those much larger sources of income, rather than adding relatively small amounts in taxation on bingo, which will have a disproportionate effect on those on modest and low incomes.

Surely the Current Banking Crisis should warn them off such a model.

The United States had an election in the middle of a Banking Crisis.

Since the Treasury Committee took evidence in Belfast a number of months ago on the Banking Crisis, I have continually been in contact with many of the distressed savers, as well as with the moderator of the Presbyterian Church, Dr. Donald Patton.

If the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden is to lend money to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, I hope that he will conduct an honest assessment of the risks involved with that character, that he does due diligence and that he gets some proper security, because what caused the Banking Crisis were improper risk management, lack of due diligence and lack of proper security for the assets.

The Banking Crisis has thrown up a deeper-seated problem.

We have a Government who delayed when the Banking Crisis started, refusing to guarantee sterling deposits across the banking system, and who took a year to get a banking Act on the statute book, but who even now have not introduced changes to the very banking regulations that led to many of the problems in the first place.

This means responding in particular to the threat to the economy posed by the Banking Crisis, but it also means taking steps to mitigate the impacts on real people - on those who may have lost their job or been unable to find their first one, on those worried about their financial circumstances and their savings, or on those perhaps having trouble paying their mortgages or getting on the housing ladder.

The summit was particularly important for setting out the framework for a European Union response to any future Banking Crisis, and I welcome the agreement.

There have been discussions of the cost of compensation, but they come in the context of a Banking Crisis in which the Government have stepped in to rescue many individuals facing hardship, often, again, because of regulatory failure.

We have taken a hit from the Banking Crisis, and without that link to London our city would find it difficult to recover.

I had never imagined such figures at the time, but since the Banking Crisis, they have become everyday.

The Treasury Committee has made a detailed examination of the Banking Crisis.

The Statement does not come close to acknowledging one central fact about the Banking Crisis: namely, that the regulatory arrangements that the Government set up failed.

We may be over the worse of the Banking Crisis but serious economic problems remain and the major tax-raising measure is being introduced more for political short-term reasons than for sound long-term planning.

Within the first 10 days of coming back there had been three emergency Statements about the scale of the Banking Crisis.

The current rise in unemployment is a direct result of the recession, which was caused by the Banking Crisis.

During the Banking Crisis, they did not means-test those who might have lost their money in a bank; they paid up.

Getting through This Banking Crisis is one thing, but what has been done to ensure that we do not get into another one in future?

The Government have already taken steps internationally and domestically, through regulation by the Financial Services Authority, to deal with the Banking Crisis.

The hon. Member for Sherwood made the valid point that, although the Government replied that they have a global strategy for dealing with the Banking Crisis - that is a recognisable part of the strategy - in the car sector, it was not just left to the banks to sort out the sector's problem.

Crucially, he added: "After all, if the defence offered up over the Banking Crisis is that no one saw it coming, the same cannot be said in relation to anti-social behaviour.

The Economic Affairs Committee has a broad remit and normally enjoys a wide choice of topics for its inquiries, but in the autumn of 2008 the Banking Crisis chose itself.

This report, like others that the committee has produced, serves an important educational function: it should be required reading for all those who want to understand the origins of the Banking Crisis and the steps that might be taken to prevent such events in the future.

Noble Lords will be aware that hedge funds were the villains of choice as the cause of the Banking Crisis; subsequent analysis has, however, shown that they had little or nothing to do with it.

It was one of the longest booms in recent history, and we had forgotten that all booms come to an end and that in the 1970s we had a Banking Crisis, as well as a deep recession in the 1980s and another recession in the 1990s.

What did the regulators get wrong during the Banking Crisis?

Accompanying the Banking Crisis is understandable public anger about the current situation.

It was about the Banking Crisis and the global financial crisis, and how they had arisen.

It was inevitable in those circumstances that a Major Banking Crisis would inflict great damage on the British economy.

However, the Bank of England already produces a financial stability report, so the creation of a new body is less important than how its members analyse the data and measure the risk, and whether they feel that they have the authority and ability to stop risky activities that lead to the systemic problems seen in the Banking Crisis.

Despite some of the glib green-shoots commentary, we should understand that the Banking Crisis represented nothing unusual.

The report that the Treasury Committee prepared on the initial stages of the Banking Crisis usefully highlighted some of the difficulties of communication both between the tripartite authorities and, perhaps equally importantly, outwards to the rest of us, as they acted.

As far as I am aware, only in this country, of all the major economies that had a Banking Crisis, are the Government content to stick with the existing system.

The Banking Crisis has brought Doha to a shuddering halt and events today make a settlement even harder to achieve than when we wrote the report.

We must ask ourselves how the Banking Crisis will affect the resumption of world growth and free trade that we want.

I have always been a defender of open trade and I think that, in a sense, the Banking Crisis has been seen as a crisis of globalisation.

The other day, I visited a company in my constituency that is suffering as a result of the Banking Crisis; dozens of SMEs that have not approached me are likely to be in a similar situation.

First, the Banking Crisis has shown us clearly that we should not, and cannot, depend on financial services to be the bedrock of our industry.

Does my noble friend agree that there is widespread public concern that the banks have, in the main, depicted little evidence that they are prepared to undertake the radical reforms required since the Banking Crisis?

Above all, they differ from banks in the much lower importance of liquidity risks, which had a central role in the Banking Crisis.

It has not shown that level of vulnerability with which the Banking Act was designed to deal during the extremes of the Banking Crisis a couple of years ago.

The economic downturn that followed the Banking Crisis has been the most severe since the second world war.

If the hon. Gentleman was right in his analysis, there would not have been a Banking Crisis in any other country.

The Opposition made the wrong call on the Banking Crisis and the wrong call on the recession, and now they are making the wrong call on the recovery as well.

The origins of this structural deficit do not lie, as the Government like to say, only with the Banking Crisis.

Our problem is that we have a Banking Crisis and a crisis of over-borrowing.

I have been a critic of the deficit and the debt levels since before the recession and before the Banking Crisis.

Would the hon. Gentleman care to tell us how much Citigroup lost in the Banking Crisis?

Reform, which portrays itself as another influential Tory pressure group, advocates penalising pensioners for the Banking Crisis by abolishing the winter fuel allowance, free television licences and concessionary bus fares, and ending retirement pensions, council tax and housing benefit, widows' and war widows' pensions, carer's allowance and disability living allowance for people receiving considerably less than average pay.

of global GDP will be lost for ever as a result of the Banking Crisis.

Given that the Chancellor has said that if there was Another Banking Crisis, he would just have to come back to the House and ignore the Bill, it does nothing for the credibility of these targets, and the Government's policy on the deficit, to have in place the wrong measure.

It makes important changes to the framework to help to ensure that if there is Another Banking Crisis a proper resolution is in place.

My Lords, the Government propose a co-ordinated global solution to the Banking Crisis.

What discussions have taken place between the Obama Administration and the Government to ensure that there is an international response to the Banking Crisis?

I suspect that if what is happening with buy-to-rent mortgages in my constituency is being replicated across the country, it is one of the reasons why we had a Banking Crisis.

I have been consulted more extensively than at any time in my past five years in this job-even more than I was at the height of the Banking Crisis.

The Bill responds to the financial crisis, but it perpetuates the very tripartite system which so significantly managed to avoid spotting the Banking Crisis.

Arguably, the only advanced economy able to largely withstand the Banking Crisis was Canada, and its regulatory structure is very similar to our own.

They are victims of this recession not only because of unemployment, however; they are victims of an unsustainable and irresponsible increase in public spending that has brought us to this position, because the truth is that, contrary to what the Secretary of State tried to make us believe, the massive deficit we are facing is not just a result of the Banking Crisis.

Partly as a response to the Banking Crisis and some of the issues that have led us into an international recession, the public no longer has an appetite for "business as usual".

On Second Reading, he said: "Arguably, the only advanced economy able to largely withstand the Banking Crisis was Canada, and its regulatory structure is very similar to our own".

The results of the Banking Crisis, though, remain with us to this day.

In the face of those uncertainties, the Government must act as a buffer, providing support to the economy as the private sector recovers from the Banking Crisis and resultant recession.

Even before the Banking Crisis, our finances were in a weak state.

The country faces a big choice-a serious plan for growth and deficit reduction from the Chancellor who has steered Britain through the Banking Crisis and the worst global recession for generations, or a set of political gimmicks from the student politicians who would put our country's future at risk.

The Banking Crisis was a symptom of the problem, not necessarily the cause.

His criticism of auditors had some traction, but they had far less to do with the problem than the failings of the tripartite system of banking regulation, which was set up by the Bank of England Act 1998, and which spectacularly failed when the Banking Crisis occurred.

The changes and relaxations introduced under Mrs. Thatcher contributed to-I do not say that they brought it about-the Banking Crisis, and the banking crisis has undoubtedly caused most of the deficit, directly as a result of the taxpayer having to provide bail-out funds to some of the banks that were going broke and to give guarantees to others to prevent them from going broke.

The Banking Crisis and the recession that followed exposed fundamental problems for an economy that has become too dependent on a single sector.

We are paying the price of lack of corporate financial literacy in the Banking Crisis.

The Labour Government were immensely fortunate to have him as an expert during the Banking Crisis.

Since the beginning of the Banking Crisis, we have lost more than 30,000 small firms, and the drying up of bank credit is largely to blame.

This area must be nurtured even after the Banking Crisis of the past few years.

The shadow Chancellor has mentioned the Banking Crisis several times.

Of course, we had to deal with the effects of the Banking Crisis and the downturn that followed, which had a very severe effect on our public finances as well as other public finances.

Indeed, in the Recent Banking Crisis, far from being a wealth creator, the financial sector proved to be a wealth destroyer.

Given that the Banking Crisis commenced in summer 2007 and that Basel II is not meant to be fully implemented until October-November 2012, I would have thought that it would have made more sense for the incoming Government to push for the early international implementation of Basel II rather than unilaterally implementing a domestic banking levy now.

As a trustee of a charity for economic education, I would like to give what is perhaps an alternative perspective on the cause of the Banking Crisis; I hope that Members will indulge me.

The euro is under threat, which must alarm the Chinese, and the economic recovery from the Banking Crisis is far from secure.

Just as the Banking Crisis changed the rules of the game for financial services, so this disaster must change the rules of the game across the world for energy policy.

In This Banking Crisis we need to find a way to redesign banking so that money can be lent to the poorest in our society so that they can embark on initiatives of their own invention in order to change their lives.

Is my hon. Friend aware that Great Britain went into the recession with the largest budget deficit in the developed world and that that was nothing to do with the Banking Crisis but was solely due to the management of the economy bythe right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)?

Is my hon. Friend aware that Great Britain went into the recession with the largest budget deficit in the developed world and that that was nothing to do with the Banking Crisis but was solely due to the management of economy bythe right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)?

My noble friend Lady Kingsmill, who I do not think is present today, said in the debate on the gracious Speech: "Since the beginning of the Banking Crisis, we have lost more than 30,000 small firms, and the drying up of bank credit is largely to blame".

At the heart of the Banking Crisis was a rapid and unsustainable increase in debt.

When the Banking Crisis hit, those receipts fell.

Think how the Banking Crisis, immigration and terrorism shaped the debates at the recent general election.

Before the Banking Crisis and the recession struck, our historic debt stood at about 40%, a level comparable to that in some other regions.

That does not mean that we will go into a new utopia or suddenly into overdrive with superbly high growth rates; it means that we will start recovering from a Disastrous Banking Crisis and recession, which some of us felt were made far worse by the policies and antics of the Labour party when it was in office.

I remind new Conservative Members that when those who are now in government were in opposition, they got it wrong on Northern Rock and wrong on how to deal with the Banking Crisis.

First, the Banking Crisis has led to large falls in lending.

Everybody accepts that the Banking Crisis caused problems, but they were exacerbated by the actions of the previous Government.

Is it not the case that the Banking Crisis was massively exacerbated by a very poor regulatory system?

There is always a lag between the human cost of a recession and the end of an economic downturn, so placing further pressure on the very people who are the true victims of the Banking Crisis by hitting their disposable income seems callous.

Voluntary organisations and charities were not responsible for the Banking Crisis, nor for the financial crisis left by the last Labour Government.

Do they have any reason to disagree with Mr Derek Birkett, a former grid controller, as reported in yesterday's Daily Express, who has estimated that the calamity about to be visited upon the British people through the climate change policy of the European Union-the science for which has completely collapsed-will amount to at least the cost of the Banking Crisis?

The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury was right to say that some of the problems were brought about by the Banking Crisis that precipitated the global recession.

The fact is that the Banking Crisis, which started in the American sub-prime mortgage market, caused the biggest global contraction that we have experienced in the real economy since the Wall street crash in 1929 turned into the great depression and led directly to the outbreak of the second world war.

He was relentless in conducting his inquiries into the Banking Crisis, and many a banker did not look forward to appearing before him when he sought to hold them to account, exposing their greed and ineptitude which brought the world economy to the brink of collapse.

The problem is the hole in the economy caused by the Banking Crisis.

Over the past 13 years, Labour allowed the banking system to become completely unregulated and presided over the Biggest Banking Crisis of our lifetime.

Equitable Life victims were not responsible for the Banking Crisis, and they certainly do not deserve to be penalised by the slash and burn policies of the present Government, which respected economists are now suggesting might send us into a double-dip recession.

Does he agree that because of the Banking Crisis there are major cross-border interests that we need to deal with at a British-Irish level?

I would point out to the hon. Lady that the Office for Budget Responsibility says that there is a structural deficit of £109 billion-I believe that is the figure-which has nothing to do with the Banking Crisis or the recession and will not be eliminated by growth.

The structural deficit, and the amount of money that the previous Government borrowed and this coalition Government have inherited, are not down to the Banking Crisis.

I am also aware from money advice centres, Citizens Advice and other advice centres in my area that since the Banking Crisis the number of people complaining about how the banks have dealt with them has risen considerably.

We have looked, therefore, at the impact on Scotland in the context of the Banking Crisis.

It has not just happened since the Banking Crisis of two years ago; for many years before that, people complained about unfair charges.

The hon. Gentleman is not known for overstatement, but I would say to him that we inherited a situation of rising unemployment, the biggest fall in output in a generation, the Biggest Banking Crisis-thanks to the way in which the previous Government had regulated the banks-and a huge budget deficit.

My final observation is that people are pretty clear, in the House and in Scotland, that if Scotland had been independent over the past three years, given the scale of the Banking Crisis, it would now look like Iceland.

The pensioners and the poor people of this country did not create the Banking Crisis, so why are the Government making them pay with cuts such as this, which will inevitably mean rises in fares and reductions in services?

In that period-before the Banking Crisis-Britain jumped from the high-jobs-growth camp to the low-jobs-growth camp.

Our structural deficit in 2007 before the Banking Crisis was 3 per cent of gross domestic product.

While the Banking Crisis was in full swing in 2008, it seemed that almost overnight the financial sector had become a useful scapegoat for all our economic ills.

All in all, it was the credit crunch, as we know, that led to the Banking Crisis and the recession.

Since the Banking Crisis, there has been much talk about the difficulties small businesses have had in accessing capital.

The truth is that we are delighted about economic growth and we take credit for regenerating the economy and saving the country from the Banking Crisis.

The problem in Ireland is driven not by high public spending but by a Banking Crisis.

] Opposition Members need to recognise that the problems facing Ireland stem from a Banking Crisis-the banking sector was poorly regulated.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Banking Crisis was caused, in large part, by poor regulation?

We inherited a situation of very deep recession, a Major Banking Crisis and a record fiscal deficit.

When I was preparing for the debate, I had occasion-and a little more time than I expected, owing to my difficult journey from Scotland to London today-to examine an excellent study of the Banking Crisis by three major economists in a book entitled "Balancing the Banks", by Mathias Dewatripont, Jean-Charles Rochet and Jean Tirole.

Across the world, we are seeing the terrible effects of a credit crunch causing a Banking Crisis, in turn causing a deficit crisis and then a growth crisis.

Sadly, it has taken the Recent Banking Crisis in Ireland for us to remember how important our trade with Ireland is.

We know the background to today's debate: we have to deal with a huge economic legacy of the combination of international problems, the Banking Crisis and the previous Government's policies.

Finally, there is the Chancellor's frequently expressed belief that Britain should look to Ireland for inspiration, which he expressed both before the Banking Crisis, when he urged us to emulate the "Irish miracle", and since the crisis, with his desire to copy some of Ireland's painful austerity measures.

It is possible that a sovereign default could trigger a Banking Crisis and even failure in parts of the eurozone, because banks hold a large amount of sovereign debt on their balance sheets.

That helped the run on Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock accounts, thereby developing Our Banking Crisis.

The Irish economy is in its current situation because it had a Banking Crisis, not an economic crisis.

We have talked about the three converging elements: the Banking Crisis, the sovereign debt crisis, and how the complicating factor of Ireland's membership of the euro is exacerbating those issues.

So much complete nonsense, and dangerous nonsense, has been talked about the relationship between the euro, the Banking Crisis and the sovereign debt crisis that we have faced over the past year or two that I feel inspired to comment on it in this debate.

The hon. Gentleman knows that after the Massive Banking Crisis that happened under the last Government as a result of poor supervision of an overweight banking sector, this Government are trying to introduce measures to make it more stable and to contribute to the real economy.

However, I did not sit in the other place; I joined your Lordships' House in October 2008, at the peak of the Banking Crisis.

If our spending was profligate, and if Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members thought that at the time, why did the then shadow Chancellor commit himself to matching our spending plans until the Banking Crisis hit internationally?

The second point that I wish to raise in the couple of minutes that I have left relates to the Department's failure to tackle the Banking Crisis properly.

Although the shadow Secretary of State said that he was not a deficit denier, he went on to say that the large deficit had arisen because of the Banking Crisis.

We had a structural deficit for seven years before the Banking Crisis began.

If that continues, we are going to have Another Banking Crisis, whatever the system of regulation may be.

]The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) and others seem to have complete amnesia about the fact that Labour presided over the Biggest Banking Crisis and the deepest recession since the 1930s.

For the shadow Chancellor to deny that there was a structural deficit even before the Banking Crisis is simply to deny reality.

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the position this country was in before the Banking Crisis, he will see that we were running a huge structural deficit.

The policy approach that we adopted meant that our region had the fastest growth rates of any English region right up until the Banking Crisis.

I argue very strongly that the people of Glasgow understand that the Banking Crisis was the fundamental cause of the recent economic experiences, and there is great resentment that that sector is not being made to contribute more to the solutions.

It is a pity that the post bank initiative has not been carried forward in the Bill, as there is room for alternative systems in light of the Banking Crisis.

I urge the Government to review that aspect of their pension policy and to abandon their short-term thinking on the economy, so that members of the armed forces and their families do not pay the price for the Banking Crisis, in which they had no part.

The third element-which I do not think was acknowledged adequately by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton-is that before there ever was an economic downturn, before the Banking Crisis hit, before the deficit became part of the political currency, there was already a problem with public service pensions, which the previous Government had acknowledged and was beginning to address, and which was going to require pretty drastic action sooner or later, irrespective of the nation's finances plunging as they did.

It existed before the Banking Crisis.

If the change is being made to address the structural deficit, that existed a long time before the Banking Crisis, as he rightly said, but I do not remember any dissident voices from the Tory and Liberal Democrat Benches at the time saying that we should reduce armed forces pensions.

Nobody in Government is saying that the precise measures that we are taking now are those that got the country into deficit, but the fact is that between 2001 and the Banking Crisis, we ran a budget deficit, some of it during a boom period in which traditional Keynesian economics should have dictated that we run a budget surplus.

I share the hon. Gentleman's sense that the banking system is responsible for the greatest injustices in our society, which I fight often, but, as has been pointed out, these reforms long predate the Banking Crisis.

I was critical of the rise in the deficit, and in the debt, in Budgets from 2005 onwards, before the recession and before the Banking Crisis, so of course sustainability and affordability have to be considered within this proposal and dealt with in some detail.

The increase in the deficit was primarily caused by the Banking Crisis, which was an international crisis as the hon. Gentleman accepts, and by the fact that we stimulated the economy, which he also accepts, although he said we should have stimulated it even more.

The Current Banking Crisis surely provides an opportunity for a radical redesign of retail banking, including combating financial exclusion and creating an accessible and trusted banking system.

The current Banking Crisis surely provides an opportunity for a radical redesign of retail banking, including combating financial exclusion and creating an accessible and trusted banking system.

Does the Chancellor agree, as I do, with the Governor of the Bank of England in asserting that if we are to avoid Another Banking Crisis in this country, we must have a complete separation between commercial and investment banks, which of course create these collateralised debt obligations?

That is an indication of the scale of the Banking Crisis.

So began the structural deficit, long before the intervention of the Banking Crisis.

Only when the Banking Crisis arrived did the then Opposition take a different approach.

Labour ran a structural deficit some seven years before the Banking Crisis in 2007-08, and we entered the financial crisis with the largest structural deficit in the G7.

Having said that, Barclays did not take any public money during the Banking Crisis, for which it should be applauded.

The main problem that we faced was an Acute Banking Crisis that hit us and hit other countries in the world.

What would Britain do if there was a Major Banking Crisis which affected cross-border banks and something needed to be done at the European level in order to rescue the banking system?

His explanation of the origins of the Banking Crisis and the recession that it caused is partisan fiction - it has very little connection to economic reality.

His explanation of the origins of the Banking Crisis and the recession which it caused is partisan fiction-it has very little connection to economic reality.

The Great Banking Crisis of 2007, which began in the American sub-prime mortgage market, administered a huge and near-fatal shock to the world's financial system.

The Great Banking Crisis transmitted itself to the real economy in the form of a synchronised global recession.

They decided that dealing at breakneck speed with the deficit created by the Banking Crisis was more important than any other consideration, including protecting people against long-term unemployment or against cuts in vital public services.

I would take any pronouncement from the rating agencies with a very large pinch of salt, as they are hugely compromised by the part they played in making the Banking Crisis worse and they need to be reformed, but, unlike the Chancellor, we have neither made their flawed and partial judgments the central justification for our economic policies nor installed them as the most important judges of our success by giving a dangerous credence to the fiction that the UK's ability to finance its debts is at risk for reasons of petty party politicking.

Comments about the Banking Crisis and bankers' bonuses tend to push to one side what I would regard as the core argument, which is how we can be competitive as an international financial centre.

In future years, the Government should increase the bank levy to ensure that the banks continue to pay their fair share of tax, so that taxpayers are not left to pick up the bill for the Banking Crisis.

After the Banking Crisis, the Labour Government did exactly the right thing.

The European Parliament recently adopted a position backing the idea of a tax that ensures that financial services make a contribution to the cost of recovery from the Banking Crisis.

I remember in 2007 and 2008 being in dispute with the then Government, because I felt they were setting up a Banking Crisis that we could have avoided, but unfortunately my voice was not listened to; they did not take action on interest rates and money market conditions to prevent the crisis.

Was it not his party's Government under Margaret Thatcher who deregulated the mortgage market, and is it not the case that up until the Recent Banking Crisis hit, his party's Front Benchers were talking about lighter regulation of the banking sector, not more regulation?

He is giving an interesting explanation of the causes of the Banking Crisis.

Does my hon. Friend agree that if we had listened to those on the Conservative Front Bench, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who did not want to intervene in Northern Rock and wanted to let banks go bust, the Banking Crisis in this country would have - [ Interruption.

This is the same Alex Salmond who said that the Banking Crisis was down to “spivs and speculators”.

Given the Banking Crisis, we might want to look again at some stage-I do not know whether we would-at the Article 127(6) provision concerning the conferral on the European Central Bank of specific tasks relating to prudential supervision.

However, as we have seen recently with the Banking Crisis, things can go awry.

I would say gently to my hon. Friend that only a few years ago the Banking Crisis was not foreseen, and the same people who did not foresee that are still giving us advice.

We would move into a Serious Banking Crisis.

Sadly, because of the Banking Crisis, the banks' withholding of cash and the difficulties with Bradford & Bingley, which funded housing associations, the slack has had to be taken up by the Scottish Government, who have been funding as many new housing starts as is humanly possible.

How could it be anything other than choppy, when we are recovering from the greatest recession since the 1930s, the Biggest Banking Crisis in our history, landed with the biggest budget deficit in peacetime?

The Government have put in place three measures: first, a credible plan to deal with the deficit; secondly, a plan for growth that supports the private sector and rebalances our economy; and thirdly - astonishingly, the shadow Chancellor did not mention this - a plan for the banking sector, to ensure that we deal with the problems we currently face while also preventing a repeat of the Banking Crisis in future.

That is what went wrong, and if the right hon. Gentleman wants to go on defending the system that led to the Biggest Banking Crisis in our entire history he can be my guest.

Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies clearly show that two thirds of the deficit was the Banking Crisis, while the remaining third, yes, was excess investment over income, which was investment in the future.

He does not understand the cause of the Banking Crisis and the collapse of the banking model.

This is a promising time for financial mutuals, in the wake of the Banking Crisis and against the backdrop of the big society agenda and the emphasis on debt affordability at all levels.

In the middle of the Banking Crisis, there was one bank that did not need bailing out and which had run its business ethically: the Co-operative bank.

It is very important that we distinguish between the excessive bonuses at the top and the bonuses that top up relatively modest wages for the bank clerks, who are feeling quite attacked personally when the Banking Crisis was none of their making.

When the bankers start squealing and the City journalists start repeating their squeals and appearing on radio and television saying how terrible it would be to impose further taxation on the bankers, it is worth remembering the scale of the banking industry, and the scale of the damage the Banking Crisis did to this country.

We would all accept that there has been a Banking Crisis, but many people also recognise that something more fundamental was going wrong with the working of our economy and public finances, and that was due to the fact that we had a structural deficit.

The scandals and mistakes that have occurred with devastating consequences-going into tens of billions of euros, as we all know, and the threat of a Banking Crisis which undoubtedly will affect us if it arises, and so forth-would have been avoided, because somebody else would have been able to go through those accounts.

One of the things that we learnt from the Banking Crisis was that the failure of boards was at the heart of what went wrong in those companies, and the failure of shareholders who look after our savings and our pensions properly to engage was one of the great deficiencies.

The Banking Crisis of 2008 and its aftermath provide a case in point.

The article concludes with the sentence: "The Union that has served them for three centuries may be the only asset in Scotland that has not depreciated sharply", over the last two weeks of the Banking Crisis.

The proof of all the arrangements that we are putting in place, and the international arrangements, will be in the pudding - although it is not really the kind of pudding that we want, because it is a Banking Crisis.

If the order of magnitude of cost is £4 billion to £7 billion, the fact that broadly speaking that equates to the bonuses that bankers pay themselves each year gives some sense of how difficult that is likely to be, particularly against the estimated annual cost of Another Banking Crisis of £40 billion.

It really frightened me and I think, as a social democrat, that the British welfare state would find it very difficult to withstand Another Major Banking Crisis on the kind of scale we have seen.

We should be very wary of blaming the Banking Crisis on a failure of regulation.

If your Lordships think you have witnessed a Banking Crisis, I believe you have seen nothing yet.

It of course demands some security as rapidly as possible against the horrors that have been visited upon our fellow citizens as a result of the Banking Crisis of recent years, and the economic and financial crisis that is the consequence of it.

If the Banking Crisis and recession has taught us anything it should be about values.

If ever we saw a failure of regulation and the problems that we have in regulating a marketplace, the Banking Crisis that has arisen from the behaviour of our banks should give us pause.

The Banking Crisis has not been resolved.

In the wake of the Banking Crisis, there is a growing consensus that our economy needs greater relative strength outside financial services.

In the wake of the Banking Crisis, when more than 90% of the people of this country are experiencing the same worries and fears about losing their house and savings, now is the ideal time to bring about change for the better, just as happened with consensus after the second world war.

There is complete amnesia about the fact that 16 months ago they left this country with high unemployment, a high budget deficit, the deepest recession this country has seen in the last 100 years, and the Biggest Banking Crisis in our history.

If the Banking Crisis should have told politicians anything, it is this: a strategy of “incentivise and then sit back” ignores the fact that markets need more than incentives.

At the time, I said that we had a Banking Crisis; that went on to become an economic crisis, which became a political crisis and a social crisis.

Its respected economics editor, Mr Chris Giles, points to some striking figures, comparing the net trade contribution to GDP since 2008 for the UK and Spain, both hit badly by the Banking Crisis.

The current proposals for a financial transactions tax in Europe are so deeply confused that different European countries, and indeed European institutions, have talked about spending the revenues of such a tax in five different ways: on development, on climate change, on social policy, on resolving the Banking Crisis, and, most recently, as the best way to supplement the EU budget.

That imbalance left us hugely exposed when the Banking Crisis hit.

As noble Lords will be aware, credit rating agencies have had a very high profile since the Banking Crisis erupted in 2008, in relation to which there has been widespread and, in the committee's view, deserved criticism of their role.

Savers in Northern Rock will also need reassurance that their new bank's depleted capital reserves will not bring repeated anxieties if Another Banking Crisis occurs.

I thank the Government for their support of the sector, their recognition of the role that credit unions can play in increasing and improving financial inclusion, and for their general interest in mutuals, especially in the wake of the Banking Crisis.

It is a consequence of the Banking Crisis that we are focused on it.

In the previous Parliament, a written statement would be made on, for example, the Banking Crisis, a regulatory news announcement would be made in the morning and an oral statement would be made during the day.

Financial stability was added in 2008 as a result of the Banking Crisis.

Given the shadow Chancellor's involvement in the Biggest Banking Crisis in the history of our country, and given his overt criticism of the current Chancellor, will my right hon. Friend tell me whether he has received from him any constructive submissions at all during this period?

This is an understandable reaction to the Banking Crisis of 2008, and it is necessary to restore public confidence in the system.

It is due to our having had the most enormous Banking Crisis since the 1930s.

Will the Prime Minister consider introducing a legal sanction of strict liability into his draft Financial Services Bill so that those responsible for the Banking Crisis will be taken to task?

I do not want to be an apologist for the Banking Crisis.

If there is contagion, there would be a very Serious Banking Crisis.

As Lord Turner said in his review of the regulatory response to the Banking Crisis: “The failure to do this analysis and to take action on it was one of the crucial failures of the years running up to the financial crisis.

Well, that is a bit like the John Cleese sketch - the right hon. Gentleman started it by creating the Biggest Banking Crisis in this country's history.

I believe that it replaces the confused and dysfunctional system that presided over the Biggest Banking Crisis in our modern history.

” My predecessor, who went through the Banking Crisis, says that he was dealing with a system in which differences of opinion were not accommodated.

The Bill is essentially about changing the structure of regulation from the tripartite system to a twin peaks model in the light of the Recent Banking Crisis.

First, no system of regulation can guarantee that there will never be Another Banking Crisis.

That style and structure of regulation let down consumers who were sold toxic products, taxpayers who paid the bill for the Banking Crisis, and those who relied on banks to finance their business or to enable them to buy a home.

Given that when investigating the failure of RBS, Adair Turner concluded that the FSA has little power under the existing rules to take action against individuals associated with the Banking Crisis; that the director of the SFO believes that “things have got to change”; and that we are still waiting for anyone in the UK to be prosecuted in relation to the global financial crisis, will the Solicitor-General use his best efforts to persuade the Attorney-General to look again at introducing a crime of corporate negligence so that prosecutors have a full range of weapons in their armoury to use in future against reckless financiers?

We all appreciate that This Banking Crisis has gone on considerably longer than we envisaged.

However, the Banking Crisis and the credit crunch of 2008, which we seem to have forgotten had its origins not on the continent of Europe but in the United States, also caused a crisis of confidence in the eurozone.

And we should not imagine that the Banking Crisis has finally been put to bed, for over the past couple of years what has become apparent is a dramatic rise in eurozone countries taking on their own country's debt.

In relation to Europe, they would see us perhaps as a touch arrogant sometimes in looking at the problems that they were facing, as if somehow we had it all right and were sitting pretty and driving ahead with no pain or dislocation-as if we did not have a Banking Crisis and billions and trillions of credit card debt in this country.

Banks are about profit, but as they make that profit from people and from communities, they bear certain responsibilities, which we have not witnessed their fulfilling since the Banking Crisis.

When the Banking Crisis struck, the taxpayer provided support in a way that we have not done with numerous other industries.

If you want to see the effect of cosy consensus in the boardroom, you have only to look at the Recent Banking Crisis to see what happens when challenge is absent.

Our policy at the time of the Banking Crisis did not therefore create high interest rates.

My Lords, in reply to a question on19 December the Chancellor of the Exchequer advised that there needed to be a debate about the role of IFRs in the Banking Crisis.

But we have also been hit, as my noble friend Lord Eatwell described in a wonderful metaphor, by a tsunami of a Banking Crisis.

There is still scope for prioritising within public expenditure social investments such as training, research and higher education, which will strengthen our position in the knowledge economy-exactly the sort of thing that the Swedes did in response to Their Banking Crisis in the 1990s.

We saw in 2008 how the Crisis in Banking could bring our economy to its knees.

The fiscal rules that were designed for a time of relatively full employment and equilibrium are not fine for the zero growth, high-unemployment equilibrium caused by the Banking Crisis of four years ago, which is where we are now.

Perhaps the most important piece of legislation of all is one that will stop a repetition of the Banking Crisis that resulted in the house of cards that the previous Government allowed the finance industry to build tumbling down.

Before the Banking Crisis we had one of the lowest rates of unemployment in decades.

Yesterday the Governor said: “We have been through…the biggest downturn in world output since the 1930s, the Biggest Banking Crisis in this country's history, the biggest fiscal deficit in our peacetime history, and our biggest trading partner, the euro area, is tearing itself apart”.

I do not know whether they have the strength to do what is necessary, but unless the banking system is significantly shored up, if the problems spreading from Greece continue - contagion and so on - we could have Another Major Banking Crisis on our hands.

By 2007, before Any Banking Crisis had taken effect, the debt had risen to £650 billion, because supporters of the previous Government were spending, at a rate of £30 billion to £40 billion a year, money that they simply did not have.

By 2007, before any Banking Crisis had taken effect, the debt had risen to £650 billion, because supporters of the previous Government were spending, at a rate of £30 billion to £40 billion a year, money that they simply did not have.

In 2008, 2009 and 2010, when the Banking Crisis hit, it was all Labour's fault: now it is all Europe's fault.

Just as the Treasury Select Committee pursued its inquiries into the Banking Crisis, so the Culture, Media and Sport Committee has pursued its investigations into the media crisis.

I do not agree, however, that the problems in Greece are caused only by the euro or by the Banking Crisis.

Another noble Lord made the point that the Bill does nothing at least to look at how the accuracy of data in reporting to regulators should be checked; nor has it done anything about FRSA, which contributed greatly to the Banking Crisis by hugely overstating bank profits in good years and vice versa in bad years and led to bank accounts that no one can understand.

The Banking Crisis has been a worldwide phenomenon and, as the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has pointed out, at its heart was an intellectual flaw-the belief that developments in financial management techniques and globalisation gave us the opportunity to expand lending while spreading risk.

My Lords, when the Banking Crisis hit the UK in 2007 and 2008, no one knew who was in charge.

The numbers are set out in the document, but I suggest that the costs of implementation over that period and beyond on a running basis are very modest in relation to both the cost of the Banking Crisis over which the previous Government presided and the size of the UK economy.

But can my noble friend confirm that the Banking Crisis actually cost the taxpayer, in direct cash, loans and guarantees, close to £500 billion-£465 billion pounds?

I am grateful to my noble friend for pointing out the extraordinary cost of the Banking Crisis.

Here, we are significantly reducing the risk of Another Banking Crisis.

They have no ideas on how to resolve This Banking Crisis.

The shadow Chancellor asked some questions in the mix of his lengthy contribution, but he did not apologise for his role in the Banking Crisis.

The hon. Lady makes an important point about getting the balance right, but let us not forget that the Banking Crisis cost this economy £140 billion between 2007 and 2009.

Looking at that, we can see that, in reality, prior to 2006-07 and the start of the Banking Crisis, the amount spent on crisis loans was remarkably stable between 2000 and 2005-06.

After all, there have already been a number of Select Committee reports into the Banking Crisis.

Given the billions lost in the Banking Crisis, the material losses to every family and business in this country, we surely can afford a judicial inquiry to get this matter right.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that part of the problem with the Banking Crisis is the excessive bonus culture?

On the Banking Crisis, there needs to be an honest conversation with the electorate.

It is now almost four years since the onset of the Banking Crisis, with its crippling impact on credit availability, particularly to small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises.

Fiscal policy could work against monetary policy, rather than the two broadly working together both to deal with an over-indebted economy and to enable the decisive action that is necessary to stimulate the economy and prevent a Banking Crisis from turning into a slump.

I must stress at the outset of my speech that the present Crisis in Banking and in bank lending is not in any way the fault of the local branch staff.

The Leader of the Opposition is also out of touch if he thinks that the answer to This Banking Crisis is to force banks to close some of their high street branches.

In those circumstances, and with the background of a Banking Crisis, we need to look at the elephant in the room that is the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Having been intimately involved in the Government's response to the Banking Crisis from 2008 onwards, I would point out that the losses incurred in the British banking system-at HBOS, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland-largely occurred within the ring-fence.

I worked with Mr Tucker, the deputy governor, during the Banking Crisis.

There was a Banking Crisis at the time, and, as we have seen over the past 100 years, it is never the right time to reform the Lords.

I felt rather ashamed of the House last week - the debate on the Banking Crisis was not the greatest day for the Chamber - but these past two days have made me very proud to be a Member because the quality of the contributions has been rather fine, whether I have agreed or disagreed with them.

Even after the Banking Crisis, our banks are still too big to fail.

I specifically want to turn the focus of attention to the problem that arises when a regulator is still reeling from the fall-out of the Banking Crisis.

My interest, and my contribution today, is offered not with great expertise in the specific measures needed to put the banking sector right, but to articulate concerns about the implications of the Banking Crisis for what is sometimes referred to as the real economy.

I also feel sorry for the front-line staff who lost their jobs in the aftermath of the Banking Crisis.

We are debating in the shadow of the Worst Banking Crisis of our lifetimes and possibly the worst banking crisis there has ever been.

I am one of the few people still around who participated in the lifeboat back in 1974 in the wake of the secondary Banking Crisis then.

Yet I do not believe that we would disagree that the Banking Crisis made a significant contribution.

I also make the wider point that there has almost been a sort of global excess regulatory reaction to the Banking Crisis.

In that case, was it a one-off disastrous fall in asset prices caused by the Banking Crisis that preceded it?

We all know that the heart of the problem is the Banking Crisis.

Of course, things such as problems in the mortgage market were created by the Banking Crisis and the financial crisis.

Despite the mess we inherited and despite the headwinds from the eurozone and the impact of the Banking Crisis, we are making progress.

We all know about the Banking Crisis and its effects, the amount of pay-offs, and so on.

For that reason, the Banking Crisis is certainly not over.

If the ECB is not going to make itself liable for bank debt, Another Banking Crisis will lead to a sovereign debt crisis and we will be back in much the same situation we were in a few months ago.

Well, the Banking Crisis changed all that and the Government recognised the need for regulation at EU level.

The point is that the Banking Crisis has changed the way that we thought about the City.

Of course, we are very conscious of the Banking Crisis and the impact that it had on our economy, but are we now not in danger of fighting the last war?

It is one of the features of the Banking Crisis that it has resulted in a concentration in the number of banks.

It is very fashionable to blame the previous Government for our predicament but does the noble Lord accept that the banks have to carry perhaps 90% of the burden of responsibility, and that the Banking Crisis started in the United States-not even in this country?

As to her particular question about whether I accept that all this difficulty was caused by the Banking Crisis, no, I do not.

I believe there has been a permanent change - a major distortion - in the housing market since the Banking Crisis in 2007.

From the Banking Crisis to phone hacking, to the horrific abuse of people with learning disabilities, recent times have reminded us that culture, ethics and principles are at least as important as the law in securing a prosperous, safe, cohesive and healthy society.

In her opening remarks, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, referred to the Banking Crisis and argued that the removal of the general duty would prevent the commission becoming involved in addressing the kinds of problems associated with that.

The families who will be hit are not responsible for the economic situation, for the Banking Crisis or for the failure of the Government to get the economy growing again.

When preparing for this debate, I learnt that at the height of the Banking Crisis, the Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008 gave the Treasury the power to repeal any relevant statute bearing on the Act or any rule of law.

It would be an occasion to discuss the issue, rather than trying to devise some political advantage, in circumstances in which everyone knows that it was the Labour party that was responsible for the Banking Crisis that has so afflicted this country.

This Bill is a belated but welcome attempt to prevent the Banking Crisis of 2008 from happening again.

We were told that it was a Banking Crisis.

During the Minister's opening speech, I mentioned audit and the appalling failures of the audit industry during the Banking Crisis.

We could do nothing and allow banks gradually to recover, carry on as they did before and hope that the Banking Crisis never happens again.

There is a consensus in the House around regulation as the approach to take towards resolving the Banking Crisis and ensuring that, if we do not prevent a future crisis, we at least stave it off for, as the hon. Gentleman suggested, possibly another 70 years.

Unless we take action now, we will be back in a limited number of years to deal with Another Banking Crisis.

Never mind that all parties had agreed on Labour's spending plans right up to the Banking Crisis; never mind that the banking crisis was global and not national; and never mind that, although the failure of the banks owed a lot to failures in regulation, the Conservative party had consistently called for less regulation.

I agree that the Banking Crisis did enormous damage.

Shortly, we will realise that while we were originally told that this was a Banking Crisis and then that it was a debt crisis, we will have to face up to the reality that what we use as money is debt - debt that was loaned into existence in response to incentives created by central bankers lowering interest rates.

When the Banking Crisis hit in 2008, it was down to 35%.

That has a fundamental impact on private debt, the Banking Crisis, in-work and out-of-work poverty, work incentives and welfare.

Britain set out on the same path under Labour after the Banking Crisis, and the economy began to pick up.

Our approach to bank taxation cannot be looked at in isolation from the economic consequences caused by the Banking Crisis or from the deficit left for the taxpayer as a result of the failures of the UK banking system.

We have to recognise the special responsibility that banks and banking executives have to wider society, given the massive cost to the taxpayer of the Banking Crisis and the resulting deficit, the consequences of which many of our constituents are still suffering.

One of the major flaws that led to the Banking Crisis was that loan-to-deposit ratios across the banking sector were out of kilter.

He has forgotten more than I will ever know about the Banking Crisis, but he touched briefly on the effect on business confidence of the disastrous market conditions in the European Union.

The previous Chancellor, my right honourable friend Alistair Darling, like everyone else, did not see the 2007-08 Banking Crisis coming, nor the damage that it would do to our public finances, but in the eye of the financial storm, he did an excellent job of judging what needed to be done.

A large part of the Leader of the Opposition's speech was devoted to the continuing problems in banking and the financial sector, and many of the current problems with the economy relate to the aftermath of the Banking Crisis.

The Banking Crisis and the measures taken to avoid future crises have, as my noble friend Lady Kramer said, seriously impeded credit flows, particularly to SMEs and to individuals.

If we were to do that over the next 10 years, to get the grid up to where we believe it should be would mean £36 billion a year, which is about the equivalent of a Banking Crisis each year for the next 10 years.

How the Banking Crisis among the Greek Cypriot banks will affect the issue is still a matter for conjecture.

This is what I have to say about the idea that this Government had some kind of golden economic inheritance from the Labour party: we inherited a situation in which Britain had had the deepest recession since the 1930s, the Worst Banking Crisis in the entirety of British history and the highest budget deficit in the entire peacetime history of this nation.

We have not dealt with the Banking Crisis.

When the Banking Crisis hit a few years ago, we discovered that Calder Valley has the third most vulnerable local economy in the UK, based on the potential failure of the financial system, because of Lloyds TSB's base there.

There are many lessons from the Banking Crisis, the most obvious of which is that the sheer globalised might of financial trading can overpower the plans and defences of individual nation states.

My Lords, since the Banking Crisis in 2008, the banks are a little risk averse.

May I say to my right hon. Friend that after a lifetime as a stockbroker and fund manager, my instinct, as bond yields rise all over the world, is that we are heading for Another Banking Crisis that will certainly choke off the already inadequate lending of banks to small businesses?

Does my hon. Friend recognise that experiences during the Banking Crisis, with the charity sector and in other areas have taught us that there is a key difference between registration and regulation and that proposals that centre only on registration do not give us what we need?

They have more choice and more security as part of the United Kingdom, and when times get tough - as we saw at the time of the Banking Crisis - the United Kingdom is there to help out.

We have drawn on the best economic evidence that the recovery from a Banking Crisis of the severity that we went through is long and protracted, but we have to de-lever as an economy and try to fix our banking system.

This Government have been in power since May 2010, but can the hon. Gentleman provide one example of a criminal case of financial fraud relating to the Banking Crisis?

I understand the issues relating to length of time and the dangers of a catch-all provision but, in the aftermath of the Banking Crisis, the legal and regulatory structures, and the further changes that the Government promise to introduce, we need to ensure that the banking culture really changes.

Its absence has made it much harder to correct the collapse in small business finance after the Banking Crisis in 2008.

As a result, we went into the Banking Crisis with massively over-concentrated ownership and damaged banks that are no longer able to perform properly.

It is essential that we address the causes of the Terrible Banking Crisis of five years ago, whose consequences remain with us today.

] Given that Sir John Vickers has just warned us that British banks are still seriously under-capitalised, does my right hon. Friend now accept that ring fencing, whether electrified or not, cannot be relied on to provide adequate protection for depositors and businesses in the event of Another Banking Crisis?

I put it to the Secretary of State that all economies recover from all recessions at some point, but that our recovery has come three years after those of Germany and the United States because his Government's savage cuts turned Labour's growth and recovery from the Banking Crisis in 2010 into three years of austerity.

It created the great risk, for which we subsequently paid the price with the Banking Crisis.

In the wake of the economic debacles following 2008, one of the greatest areas of concern among the public was the apparent lack of change in the financial fortunes of those whom they viewed as being most responsible for the Banking Crisis.

The economy was still reeling from the impact of the Recent Banking Crisis and Britain had the largest fiscal deficit in our peacetime history.

Secondly on the big picture, we must take account of the 2008 Banking Crisis, a global collapse of confidence in financial institutions and a requirement for the Labour Government of the day to use millions of pounds of government money to save us from complete and utter catastrophe.

Some of them, like the labour market changes that she and other noble Lords described, are very long-term challenges, while some have been exacerbated by the Banking Crisis.

We have had to deal with the aftermath of a Banking Crisis that occurred, in part, because of failed regulation set up by the previous Government.

He is right to highlight the fact that the previous Government's changes to financial regulation contributed significantly to the Banking Crisis in 2008.

First, on the Banking Crisis the point is that the necessary reserves to deal with the unforeseen consequences were not set aside.

It is important for us all to realise just how difficult it is to recover from the scale of the Banking Crisis under the previous Government.

Again, that is a straightforward, plausible, coherent risk that it is sensible to address but that was not the reason for the Banking Crisis in America in the 1930s.

That is within the past eight months, after the Banking Crisis and during the passage of this Bill.

The full picture of how the Banking Crisis developed probably goes back to 2003-04, when there were small changes in accounting standards, but the main catalyst was the introduction of the international financial reporting standards, including international accounting standard 39, by the then Government in 2005.

We know that from the Banking Crisis post mortem published by the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum.

Before I get into the specifics of Bradford & Bingley, I will give some context on the time, the policies that we have heard reference to today, which contributed to the Banking Crisis, and this Government's response, which hon. Members have spoken about during the debate.

The hon. Gentleman will know that SME lending was hit from 2010 to 2011 because of Labour's Banking Crisis.

He was right to say that, under the German system and at the height of the Banking Crisis, they lent more to small businesses, not fewer, as happened here.

My Lords, when the Banking Crisis hit in 2008, we knew that someone, somewhere would pay a price, but even the most callous cynic would never have predicted that the people to be hardest hit would be the poorest people in Wales, while the richest people in Britain would be given a tax break and the bankers - the people who caused the crisis - would be receiving massive bonuses.

All Ministers understand as well as I do that what happened in 2008 was, in fact, a Banking Crisis that began in the United States and affected the western world.

While I accept that the Banking Crisis was an important contributor, it is clear to me, from my time in the Treasury, that the spending planned through those last few years created significant problems for this country.

Lending to small firms has been a major problem since the Banking Crisis.

The other obvious question is: if the Government are so wedded to free markets, do they consider that the free market worked well in the Banking Crisis of 2007-08?

It is hard to know where to start on the 2007-08 Banking Crisis.

The first is the role that regulation played in the Banking Crisis.

The commission's reports deal with all aspects of the Banking Crisis and many of its recommendations have been adopted by the Government.

However, in the run-up to the Great Banking Crisis and meltdown they had ceased.

We cannot release it back to where it was before the Banking Crisis.

The Government can pray in aid the fact that with the fallout from the Banking Crisis the private housing sector in this country suffered a decline in demand, but they compounded the problem by cutting the social housing budget by 60%.

It was a totally unsustainable path that contributed to the Banking Crisis that led to the deepest recession since the 1920s.

” Surely one of the lessons of the Banking Crisis is that the excessive, short-termist risk and reward bonus culture was driving dysfunctional behaviour that got us into the mess in the first place.

I have no doubt that when the Minister speaks my hon. Friends will hear a complacent desire just to move on from banking reform and a desperation to make party political points about the history of the Banking Crisis.

First, we must point out the fact that the Banking Crisis was global.

I despair when companies come to see me as their Member of Parliament and set out perfectly viable business propositions to which, before the Banking Crisis, banks would have fallen over themselves to lend money, and yet they cannot even get a foot through the door.

From the tone of the Secretary of State's remarks, it is clear that, following the Banking Crisis of 2008, this is a deep issue that confronts us as a nation.

Anyone who looks at the disastrous decisions of the previous Government leading up to the Banking Crisis will know that good regulation of financial services is necessary.

The hon. Lady is right, and it is one of the major casualties of the Banking Crisis that SME lending dried up.

The Banking Crisis reminded us that Scotland's heavy dependency on the financial services sector - a great achievement by many people working in that sector - presents a challenge when it goes wrong.

Under the previous Labour Government, the trajectory of public spending was set on a reckless course, and when the Banking Crisis hit, the true consequences were felt by hard-working families throughout the country.

Ireland is probably one of the few countries to have a Banking Crisis even greater than ours.

We were making progress on that when the Banking Crisis hit and turned the world upside down.

One of the great problems of the Banking Crisis was that the loan-to-deposit ratio went way above 100% - I think the Royal Bank of Scotland got up to 135%.

We all understand that the Banking Crisis has led to severe financial restraint, but there are still different options and priorities that Governments can adopt.

When the Banking Crisis took place, the Government- with the support of all parties in the House - found £1.

That growth did not suddenly happen following the Banking Crisis of 2008; it had been taking place before that over a period of time.

Contrary to right-wing free market mantras and Tory-Lib Dem history rewrites, it was the Banking Crisis that caused debt to rocket, the deficit to rise and borrowing to rise as well.

The level of debt under the Labour Government before the Banking Crisis was lower than we inherited from the Conservatives in 1997.

In the Budgets from 2002 right up to 2007, before the Banking Crisis was even an issue and before Lehman Brothers went broke, the Government were continually running deficits.

The level of debt under the Labour Government before the Banking Crisis was lower than that we inherited from the Tories in 1997.

If the eurozone had done better since the Banking Crisis five or six years ago, this country would not have suffered as much as we have.

Over the last five years or so, since the Banking Crisis, we have cut our defence spending while Russia has increased its expenditure.

It was a Major Banking Crisis.

We had the Biggest Banking Crisis in our history going all the way back to the beginning of the 19th century.

There are also the defence cuts that so many alliance countries, including ours, have made since the Banking Crisis in the late noughties.

] Let me explain to the shadow Chancellor: if you bring the British economy to its knees, if you have the deepest recession for 100 years, if you preside over the Biggest Banking Crisis in our history, you make this country poorer.

Indeed, she told us as much when she said that the bank had resulted from what occurred during the Banking Crisis, because of lack of investment funds for small and medium-sized enterprises.

There has of course been an enormous problem of small business access since the Banking Crisis.

Of course, as a result of the weakness of banks' balance sheets, the government funds standing behind them produced a move from a Banking Crisis to a state funding crisis in countries such as Ireland and Spain.

6% smaller in 2014 than its peak in 2008, mainly of course due to the Banking Crisis.

The Banking Crisis arose partly because power got too concentrated in certain institutions and in a certain section of the financial community.

If the House needs evidence of the results of Labour's regulation, it need look no further than the Banking Crisis.

This is a worrying example of the “market knows best” mindset and of the “Government's role is to get out of the way” mantra, which is implicated in the Banking Crisis, air pollution, food safety scares, higher energy bills for householders and sky-high rents, to name just some examples.

I am delighted to have secured this debate on health services in Halifax, and I will focus particularly on the proposal to close the accident and emergency department, which is the most important issue that has faced Halifax since the Banking Crisis of 2008.

Government Members want to airbrush the fact that there was a Banking Crisis, and a global banking crisis - [Interruption.

Moreover, the hon. Gentleman did not even mention the Banking Crisis.

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the British economy grew by 40% in the 10 years to 2008, before the Banking Crisis?

The Banking Crisis.

Yet again, from a sedentary position a Labour Member talks about the Banking Crisis that started under his party.

The last three rounds of scandal - the forex scandal, the LIBOR scandal and, earlier on, the Banking Crisis itself - suggest that the City needs to sit down and think very hard about what its relationships should be in a world of soft power.

Last year, the Government announced the first above inflation increase in the national minimum wage since the 2008 Banking Crisis, benefiting more than 1 million workers.

Does he agree that in 2010, no one on either side of the House, including him and including me, realised just how persistent the global problems were going to be and how grave the Banking Crisis was, and that therefore the growth that everyone - including him - expected to see was not achieved?

I say that because we face austerity in Europe in the aftermath of the Banking Crisis, and a Prime Minister who has naturally said that he can see the flashing red lights on the front of the global economy, and that he wants to put a rocket booster under TTIP.

However, the housebuilding industry, prior to the Banking Crisis and the credit crunch, also comprised many smaller builders working at the local level.

If the hon. Gentleman is saying that the fundamental problem was a major dislocation in Europe and the world because of the Banking Crisis and collapse, it is difficult to blame it solely on the Labour Government.

It is about something called the structural deficit and the Opposition must acknowledge that the problem we face was created not just by the Banking Crisis but by the massive overspending of the previous Government.

In other words, the biggest part came from the Banking Crisis.

The reason Conservative Members are getting so irritated is that they do not like being reminded that it was a global Banking Crisis.

We have heard a great deal from the Opposition about a Banking Crisis.

We all remember the shimmer of growth that the last Government thought they had created after the Banking Crisis, but it was merely an artificial stimulus that they had not budgeted to continue.

Under Labour, growth was 40% over the 10 years prior to the Banking Crisis in 2008.

The Banking Crisis occurred later - I expect more laughter - but Conservative Members should stop laughing because if the banking crisis was our fault, why were the USA, Japan and the entire world having the same problem?

The Chancellor's thesis appears to be to blame the cure and not the acute disease of the Banking Crisis.

The global Banking Crisis hit in 2008, when we were already a long way through that Parliament.

” Labour increased this economy by 40% in the 10 years to 2008, before the Banking Crisis.

Before the Banking Crisis hit in 2008, the right hon. Gentleman was calling for less regulation of the banking system.

Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that before the Banking Crisis hit in 2008, debt as a proportion of the country's GDP was lower than the level that we inherited in 1997?

In 2008 we had a Banking Crisis, not of our making - [Hon.

However, according to the House of Commons Library, debt in 1997 was higher than it was in 2007-08, just before the Banking Crisis hit.

I need time to go through that in detail, but the RBs losses are a reminder of the depth and the consequences of the Banking Crisis.

Since the Banking Crisis, a lot of families have had a lower income.

It is important that they help pay down the debts built up during the Banking Crisis, but equally important that they go on creating jobs, not just in London but in Edinburgh, Leeds, Birmingham, Bournemouth and across the country.

] Since Members on the Treasury Bench are so exercised, perhaps they can tell us why, if our spending plans were so bad, they backed them pound for pound until the crash; or whether they accept, as they should, that the mess we find ourselves in was actually the result of the Banking Crisis, in which the state had to nationalise a huge amount of private debt.

Does my hon. Friend agree that in the 10 years up to the 2008 Banking Crisis the economy grew by 40% under Labour, which is how we afforded to double spending on the health service, and that since 2010 - when, incidentally, the economy was growing under Labour - the share of the economy that is debt has risen from 55% to 80% because of the Conservatives' failure to grow the economy and their focus on cuts instead of growth to get the deficit down?

The Banking Crisis caused a problem, but by 2010 there was growth in the economy.

As the noble Lord, Lord McFall, said, the extension to the challenger banks seems unnecessary, as they can hardly be blamed for causing the Banking Crisis.

At present there is no laying down of responsibility or accountability by regulatory staff in the PRA, the Bank or the FCA, and yet I think we all know that the FSA had significant involvement in causing the Banking Crisis through wholly inadequate and inappropriate regulation.

He is right that the bank was set up shortly after the Banking Crisis in the depths of the dark period of 2010, 2011 and 2012, when the economy was moving very slowly, to rectify a lack of long-term liquidity in the market.

Co-operative banks suffered just 8% of the total losses incurred during the Banking Crisis, despite accounting for around a fifth of the European banking market.

Thousands of people in my constituency feel bitterly disappointed and let down by RBs and by the UK Government's approach to the Banking Crisis more generally.

This was not the culture that prevailed within our banking institutions prior to the Banking Crisis.

But what if it is less successful or its economy suffers from a UK-wide shock, such as the Banking Crisis?

It was one adopted by the previous Labour Government and noted at the time by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, as ambitious, although good progress was made before the Banking Crisis of 2008.

Or secondly, do we stand firm in the belief that steel production is a vital strategic industry in Wales and in the UK and that all options must be explored and taken to save the industry, much in the same way that the Treasury responded to the Banking Crisis in 2008?

Following the Banking Crisis, which was caused by their friends in the City, they quietly buried that document much to the chagrin ofthe right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) who co-ordinated it.

At the time, Conservative Members were calling for even lighter regulation, but what is clear, and what I will illustrate, is that Labour Members have learnt the lessons of the Banking Crisis but that this Bill shows they have not been learnt by Conservative Members.

There was a deficit long before the Banking Crisis, and there was a structural deficit that the banking crisis brought out.

We are talking about infractions in banking if, say, a Banking Crisis takes place.

It is half a loaf, and I am afraid that another half loaf will lead us more quickly to yet Another Banking Crisis for which nobody is responsible.

It is half a loaf, and I am afraid that another half loaf will lead us more quickly to yet another Banking Crisis for which nobody is responsible.

Everybody shares the frustration at what happened in the lead-up to the Banking Crisis, but we cannot get away from the fact that the Labour party played a large part in it.

We repeatedly hear legitimate concerns about the amount of time that it is taking for the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, but we have not had a fundamental review into the Banking Crisis and behaviour.

We inherited mass unemployment, an economy that had completely collapsed and a Banking Crisis.

When the Chancellor of the Exchequer was appointed to his post nearly six years ago, he was faced with several challenges: a record deficit, an increasing number of welfare claimants, and the fallout from a Banking Crisis of a scale that had not been seen since the 1930s.

This would happen, it was argued, because it would be easier for developers to get planning consent, the development would be more profitable, and smaller builders - such as those that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, has mentioned - would be encouraged to return to development, after leaving the field in the wake of the Banking Crisis.

Just like under Labour Chancellor Darling, even during the Banking Crisis, Britain has had no problem financing our budget deficit: the yield on UK government debt dropped to an all-time low of 1.

The Queen's Speech outlined an ambitious programme, but curiously does not emphasise perhaps the greatest achievement of this Government - that of restoring full employment after the Banking Crisis in 2008.

They had a large import of labour from eastern Europe during the Irish boom; then, when the economy fell away after the Banking Crisis, most of them went home; and now they are coming back again.

Is this report produced by the same Treasury that failed to foresee the Banking Crisis and the great recession that followed?

They feel that their city has suffered most because of the global recession and the downturn after the Banking Crisis.

The financial system is also substantially more resilient than it was six years ago, with capital requirements for the largest banks now 10 times higher than before the Banking Crisis.

Although we remain vigilant, we are not, today, talking about a Banking Crisis, despite a very significant adjustment in financial markets.

Our negotiating position is, in principle, strong, reflecting both the EU's huge trade and current account surpluses with the UK - the latter in excess of £100 billion per annum - and that the EU could not impose a harsh settlement on the UK to prevent a domino effect while, at the same time, seeking to manage a Major Banking Crisis in Italy and to nurse the eurozone back to health.