The Global Financial Markets Crisis is dominating the news agenda, and of course presents an immediate and pressing challenge to policy makers, first to maintain the liquidity of the banking system in the face of an unprecedented squeeze in the inter-bank market, and then to ensure that the conditions are right for its recapitalisation, not in order to facilitate a return to the lending practices of the past decade - practices that the Prime Minister has rightly categorised as belonging to the age of irresponsibility - but simply to allow the restoration of the normal workings of the wheels of commerce, through the supply of overdrafts and loan facilities to businesses large and small, the extension of consumer credit to households wishing to finance the purchase of capital goods, and the resuscitation of new mortgage lending, which the latest figures show has almost completely ceased.

Given all that went on during the summer recess - the war between Russia and Georgia and the Crisis in the Global Financial Markets - will my right hon. and learned Friend consider bringing Parliament back for two weeks in September on a permanent basis, as we once agreed to do?