§ Mr. Peter Lloydasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if the United Kingdom has assented to the adoption of the European Community directive on the supervision of credit institutions on a consolidated basis; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. MooreThis directive was adopted by the council on 13 June 1983, with the agreement of the United Kingdom. The directive represents an important step forward in the improvement of banking supervision arrangements throughout the Community, especially in member states which do not yet supervise credit institutions on a consolidated basis. The United Kingdom already supervises credit institutions in the manner required by the directive.
During the last Parliament, the House of Commons Select Committee on European legislation recommended that the directive should be debated in Standing Committee. A debate was organised for Standing Committee on 11 May, but failed to attract the necessary quorum and did not therefore take place. It was not possible to arrange a further meeting of the Committee for this purpose before the dissolution of Parliament.
In these exceptional circumstances, and given the fact that an opportunity for Parliamentary discussion had been provided, my predecessor concluded that it would be wrong to delay the adoption of this directive until scrutiny in the new Parliament could be completed. My predecessor therefore wrote to the Chairman of the outgoing Select Committee on 12 May to explain that in his view it was proper to proceed with the adoption of the directive on the basis of exception (b) in the House's resolution of 30 October 1980, that is, that there were special reasons why agreement should not be withheld.