Mr. Neil McDonnell:

A sensible honest answer to that question is that it depends. I am an old enough to remember the exchange rate mechanism crisis and what happened to mortgages in the country at that time. Do members recall that crisis? A major consideration for an export company is whether the balance of its trade is in the eurozone, sterling zone or elsewhere. There are countries in Europe, such as Denmark, that have their own currencies. Effectively, it ends up being a euro surrogate. They are managing it a little bit. It sounds like I am trying to avoid answering the question but I believe that we should at least have a contingency plan. The committee will have heard much talk about what could happen to Italy, for example. If the euro is to go through another huge crisis and sterling actually starts to look attractive again as a reserve currency, would it not be great to have a contingency plan for circumstances in which we had to opt for the punt mark II? Would it not be great to know that we had printing presses identified that would be able to run off the currency quickly? Would it not be great to know that we had somewhere to store it? A few hundred tonnes of the currency would do. We have the place to store it. People will know one is serious if one is actively planning and is ready to push the button.