We should be grateful that, in the Recent Currency Crisis, sterling was not playing a central rôle.

The Currency Crisis, which is the background to the debate, adds a certain piquancy and a certain drama and excitement to the debate.

I hope that the Government and the Bank of England will use the opportunity of not being involved in a Major Currency Crisis to try to work out what they think is a long-term solution to the abiding currency problems of the Western world.

People tell me to look at the Currency Crisis with which Europe is now struggling.

The lack of confidence in the whole of our Western world at the moment cannot be attributed to this Government, but is due to the Currency Crisis and the feeling that because of technological change unemployment is catching up with us.

What about financiers who sold Britain short during the Currency Crisis?

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Present Currency Crisis adds even more to the urgency for requiring reductions in agricultural and industrial protectionism and that these views have been expressed in the past by the United States administration?

As he pointed out in his remarks this afternoon, the Present Currency Crisis was largely brought on by the very large American deficit during 1972.

The Chancellor, in one of the few partisan passages in his speech, said that the real lesson of the Currency Crisis is that the trade unions should be good boys and that the Opposition should tell them to be good boys.

Those who look at the floating arrangements being carried out in Japancannot deny that it looks very unlike a clean float, which we might have expected to be a condition demanded by those who met to settle the Currency Crisis.

Floating the pound has left us almost insulated from the Currency Crisis.

Everyone has noted that after less than three years in office the country faces the danger of a Major Currency Crisis and a major crisis in our balance of payments.

I remember the Currency Crisis in 1967.

The EEC has offered nothing towards the solution of the Currency Crisis.

The Currency Crisis is far too severe.

Returning to the Currency Crisis, does the Prime Minister recall that in October 1976, when she was Leader of the Opposition, she said that the drop in the value of pound sterling to $1·66 was due to the lack of confidence of other countries in the Chancellor's policies?

During six years of government, Harold Wilson faced many difficult problems - the ever-Present Currency Crisis; Northern Ireland; the Rhodesia crisis; controversy over whether British troops should become involved in the war in Vietnam; the uncertainty over whether Britain would or would not join the then European Community; and industrial unrest, particularly in the docks.

As a result, Jamaica faced a Currency Crisis in 2002, Dominica faced economic collapse in 2003, and, following hurricane Ivan, Grenada faces a financing crisis that threatens its stability.

We may have a Currency Crisis and we may, one day, think back to exchange control.

As far as I am aware, Japan has not had a Currency Crisis, yet it has public debt of well over 100 per cent.

If we do not wake up soon, we could have a Currency Crisis, a bond crisis and a public financing crisis.

Of course, we must ensure that the compact that leads to further decisions is good enough and appropriately structured, but we also know that the Us is equally interested in the future of the euro, because it, too, recognises that the world's largest market - with the eurozone within it and a key part of it - is not the best place to have a Major Currency Crisis.