RESTRICTIONS ON USE OF CERTAIN NAMES AND DESCRIPTIONS (Hansard, 4 April 1979)

§ Mr. Denzil Davies
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

§ Mr. Moate
When I addressed hon. Members on Report in this Chamber, I declared that I had no interest in a bank. I said that with some sense of disappointment. I said that I was not a director of a bank and nor did I have any shareholding in a bank. This is the first and perhaps the only opportunity I shall have of correcting that statement. It transpires that the company of which I am a director has a sister company, which is a Swiss-based bank. Therefore, I have an indirect interest, although certainly no direct financial interest.
It soon became clear to me, however, that that particular bank, and a substantial number of other overseas-based banks with branches in the United Kingdom, would suffer detriment from the Bill in the form in which it left the House of Commons. The fact that that was not known to many of those institutions at the time of the Report stage and Third Reading in this House is some criticism of the speed with which the Bill was taken 1349 at that stage. There had been very full consultations in the early stages, and I believe that many institutions felt that the Bill in that form was satisfactory. Amendments were moved in Committee, and then the matter was dealt with very rapidly on Report. It was only at a later stage that the full implications became clear.
I am not blaming the Government in this respect. However, it is something that happens too often. I believe that there should always be adequate time between stages of consideration to allow outside interests to enter into consultations on Bills in their amended form.
I do not in any way quarrel with the intentions of the amendment passed in Committee, moved by one of my hon. Friends and supported by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. I think that they were endeavouring to correct what was a basic mistake in what is otherwise a very commendable and worthy Bill, and that was to try to place severe restrictions on the use of the name "bank" and banking names that have been hallowed by time and are used in the same sense throughout the world. It was, perhaps, an undesirable exercise in trying to adopt a too restrictive approach on banking names.
Nevertheless, my hon. Friends endeavoured to tidy that up, but it left many worthy institutions abroad in a very difficult situation. I am sure that the House will accept that there are some overseas institutions which, in a perfect world, we would not want to see operating in 1350 Britain under the title of "bank", but the fact remains that many substantial banks of high standing and high reputation, many banks in the Third world in particular, would have found themselves being unable to retain the name "bank" in the title of their United Kingdom branch.
This provided a very difficult situation to be resolved in another place. I was particularly grateful for the understanding that my hon. Friends and the Minister of State gave to the position of these banks. The problem has been resolved by the amendment before us, and in a way which is certainly satisfactory to those banks. However, I do not think that anyone would claim that it is a totally satisfactory solution, because now we have many British financal institutions which are in a worse position than many overseas institutions but perhaps of comparable financial standing and reputation.
Therefore, perhaps we have not heard the last word on this problem. Nevertheless, in respect of the particular problem that arose in regard to a large number of substantial and reputable banks in Britain, this latest amendment resolves the position happily.
I should like to express my thanks to all those concerned who have resolved the difficulty in this way.

§ Mr. Sydney Bidwell (Ealing, Southall)
I should like to express my thanks, too.