Mr. Stephen Bell:

I would not recognise the charge that we are slower than other institutions to reach agreement. We have invested significantly in simplifying and automating the standard financial statement, SFS, process. Now, when customers contact us, it takes them less than 25 minutes to complete the SFS process. When it was first launched, it took up to one hour. The last thing a customer in arrears wants to do after finally making contact with his or her bank is to spend one hour filling in the paperwork and looking for bills in the top drawer. We have taken much of this away and now run a voice-based telephony system which is based on trusting the customer to give the correct information. We rely on this information until such time as it may be proved to be incorrect. I do not recognise the charge that we are slow to offer solutions. As Mr. Brown said, we have taken 8,000 customers out of being in arrears and have 7,000 customers in long-term arrangements. Unfortunately, there are a number of customers with whom the legal process appears the only way to elicit the contact we need to make. There is-----