Debates — Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act

Committee stage in the Lords

23 Oct 201377 speechesView in Hansard ↗

Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)My Lords, it is my pleasure to move Amendment 98 on behalf of my parliamentary banking standards colleagues, the noble…
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Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)Crossbench
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My Lords, it is my pleasure to move Amendment 98 on behalf of my parliamentary banking standards colleagues, the noble Lords, Lord Lawson and Lord Turnbull. Essentially, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards is saying that banks must put in place mechanisms for employees to raise concerns when they feel discomfort about products or practices, even where they are not making a specific allegation of wrongdoing. It is instructive to note that during the whole financial crisis, not one whistle was blown. Why was that? The issue of fear of damage to one’s career is central. Therefore, we must ensure that we have a system that rectifies those deficiencies. One recommendation from the parliamentary commission is that a non-executive board member, preferably the chairman, should be given specific responsibility under the senior persons regime for the effective operation of the firm’s whistleblowing regime. We would like the Government to consider that. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, and I feel that that recommendation does not go far enough, particularly when one considers the situation in America. My noble friend Lord Brennan informed me earlier that under the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC has an Office of the Whistleblower within individual companies. The United States is far ahead of us on that, and, if we do not allow the chairman to undertake this, we are ducking one of the main responsibilities that we want to give to the chairman, which is to accept individual accountability. We were littered with examples of chairmen putting their hands up and saying, “Nothing to do with us. We didn’t know about the mis-selling scandals. We didn't know about the LIBOR scandal. We didn't know about the interest-rate scandals”, et cetera. If the system is to work properly, the chairman must be responsible. We consider that it is important that the chairman should be held personally accountable for protecting whistleblowers against detrimental treatment if we are to have a system that is worthy of the name in this area. We recognise that whistleblowing reports should be subjected to an internal filter by the bank to identify those that should be treated as grievances. Banks should be given the opportunity to conduct and resolve their own investigations of substantial whistleblowing allegations. The regulator should also have a part to play here. It should periodically examine a firm’s whistleblowing records in order both to inform itself about possible matters of concern and to ensure that firms are treating whistleblowers’ concerns appropriately. The FSA’s evidence to the committee appeared to show little appreciation of the personal dilemma that whistleblowers face. It should regard it as its responsibility to support whistleblowers. We also noted the regulator’s disquiet about the prospect of financially incentivising whistleblowing. As a commission, we call on the regulator to undertake research into the impact in the US of financial incentives in encouraging whistleblowing, exposing wrongdoing and promoting integrity and transparency. Two representatives of the SEC gave evidence at one of our hearings on how incentivising whistleblowing was going in the United States. It is the financial sector that must undergo a significant shift in cultural attitudes towards whistleblowing, and change its view from one of distrust and hostility to a recognition that whistleblowing is an essential element of an effective compliance and audit regime. We note that the Government did not reject our proposals, but do not propose to address them in the current legislation, instead placing the issue of whistleblowers in the context of a wider piece of work led by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. We feel that the FSA should be right at the centre of the issue. As a commission, we concluded that not only did internal compliance and formal control structures fail to uphold proper banking standards, but a culture of fear prevented employees from speaking out about serious wrongdoing. There are a number of examples to which we could refer, but the FSA did its own investigation into Barclays at the time of LIBOR. In June 2012, it came out with its final notice in which it imposed a financial penalty of £59.5 million on that bank. Because, “Barclays agreed to settle at an early stage … [it] … qualified for a 30% … discount under the FSA’s executive settlement procedures. Were it not for this discount, the FSA would have imposed a financial penalty of £85 million on Barclays”. When we looked at the evidence that was presented to us on Barclays, we found that there were dozens of people in open trading desks for several years while this practice was going on. At UBS we found that there were up to 100 people who were there for a decade and that there was a clear e-mail trail on the issue. We could only conclude that if one is asked to do something wrong, there has to be whistleblowing so that the company can develop a better culture and better process to enable it to deal with it. We do not wish people to feel that their career will be threatened if they do whistleblow or, indeed, if they do not. When we looked at the LIBOR situation at Barclays, we asked witnesses what this behaviour meant about the culture of Barclays and of the banking industry. As I mentioned, the final notice from the FSA painted a picture of a close-knit group of people who were colluding to try to manipulate LIBOR. For example, the following conversations were noted: “Trader C requested low one month and three month US dollar LIBOR submissions”. That was on 7 April 2006. Trader C was quoted as saying to his colleague: “If it’s not too late, low 1m and 3m would be nice, but please feel free to say ‘no’ … Coffees will be coming your way either way, just to say thank you for your help in the past few weeks”. Then the submitter replied: “Done … for you big boy”. In October 2006, an external trader stated in an e-mail to Trader G: “If it comes in unchanged I’m a dead man”. Trader G responded he would “have a chat”. Barclays’ submission on that day for three-month US dollar LIBOR was half a basis point lower than the day before, just as requested. The external trader thanked Trader G for Barclays’ LIBOR submission by saying: “Dude. I owe you big time! Come over one day after work and I’m opening a bottle of Bollinger”. Those are clear, open e-mails and no one can tell any of us, particularly the banking commission, that others in Barclays did not know what was going on with that situation. The noble Lord, Lord Turner, in one of the most understated comments, said that the actions over this period indicated a cultural weakness with Barclays. One might say: “You can say that again”. We read many submissions covering the direct exchanges. I will repeat just one more. Trader C said: “The big day [has] arrived…My [New York desk] are screaming at me about an unchanged 3m libor. As always, any help wd be greatly appreciated. What do you think you’ll go for 3m?”. The submitter said: “I am going 90 altho 91 is what I should be posting”. Trader C came back and said, “when I retire and write a book about this business your name will be written in golden letters”. The submitter, maybe with a little bit of common sense, replied: “I would prefer this not be in any book!”. Those comments are in e-mails—that is the trail. That is why we need whistleblowing. People were scared to give their point of view to those further up the management trail. Barclays is just a case study of all that has gone wrong with the culture. We on the commission are asking for disclosure of significant supervisory correspondence and matters considered. It would be helpful to know how many of these went to enforcement. When I was investigating this in the last Parliament, I spoke to senior individuals in the FSA. They were very clear with me. They said that Barclays’ legal and compliance team were intimidated by Bob Diamond and others. They said that the senior legal and compliance team should be sacked because they knew about LIBOR and the capital raising for a long time. Not one legal or compliance officer at Barclays ever graced the door of the FSA to complain about that situation. It happened down the line as well, particularly at the front-line, retail-desk level with PPI, with individuals being pressured in that regard. At a breakfast conference this morning, Martin Wheatley was very clear. He said that these individuals at the front-line level were trying to eke out a salary of £16,000 to £18,000 a year. They had been asked to sell PPI alongside loans and other products and would receive an extra couple of thousand pounds a year for doing so. At the top level, however, huge sums were involved. Distorted incentives led to a situation where, as a result of PPI mis-selling—deliberate mis-selling by companies—the banking industry could face a bill of £30 billion. Financial stability could be threatened as a result of these perverse incentives. The PPI scheme went on for 18 years. I suggest that if a rigorous, appropriate whistleblowing regime had been in place whereby individuals did not feel that whistleblowing would end their career, the PPI scandal could have been stopped well before that length of time had passed. As has been mentioned, a culture shift at the top in terms of accountability would help to increase confidence in this regard down the line. The chairman must be accountable and take responsibility in this area and must ensure that the whistleblowing regime works well. Martin Wheatley said this morning that the Financial Services Authority had lost its focus on the moral compass and on being honest. Perhaps if we have an appropriate whistleblowing scheme we will start to reinject honesty into the system, to ensure a better culture and better ethics whereby individuals in a company feel free to serve the interests of the company and the customer and thereby help society.
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20:37
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)My Lords, Amendments 98A and 98B stand in my name. They seek to tease out a little more detail in relation to the amend…
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Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)Liberal Democrat
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My Lords, Amendments 98A and 98B stand in my name. They seek to tease out a little more detail in relation to the amendment just moved by the noble Lord, Lord McFall, on whistleblowing. I say at once that I am wholly in favour of that amendment. The position of whistleblowers in our country is not satisfactory. Amendment 98 would widen the portal to offer assistance and compensation for whistleblowers by giving the appropriate regulator the power of initiative with regard to getting appropriate compensation for whistleblowers. My amendment is designed to widen the scope of that initiative as, at present, I feel that it is unnecessarily limited in that the whistleblower is defined by proposed new subsection (2) in Amendment 98 as a person who gives information directly to the appropriate regulator or gives it to a colleague. I notice that the amendment does not define “colleague”. Suffice it to say that many of the circumstances in which whistleblowers are sometimes encouraged—and feel morally compelled—to speak out are extraordinarily complex. I have had the good fortune to do work for the charity Public Concern at Work. Indeed, I set it up 20 or so years ago. That charity continues to do extremely valuable work. I spoke to people at the charity a couple of days ago and, believe it or not, they had been approached by roughly 2,500 whistleblowers in the past year. Astonishingly, I think that scarcely any of the whistleblowers were from the City. There are particular issues around that and we can underestimate the extraordinary pressure that a whistleblower or would-be whistleblower feels under in the context of the City, particularly as it is a very tight community in many ways. At the moment, the only recompense that a whistleblower can get, if he or she is discriminated against and suffers loss, is by using the provisions of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. However, the whistleblower has to take the initiative. This amendment, as I say, gives the initiative to the regulator, which can be of enormous help and assistance to the whistleblower. The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 scores over this amendment by having a much wider entrée to the remedies than is provided by the amendment. In particular, my amendments put the words “directly or indirectly” into the beginning of the two subsections that define how a whistleblower gets into the circle of potential compensation when they talk about giving information to the appropriate regulator or to a colleague. This is because—and I have checked this with Public Concern at Work—a lot of those who want to speak out are really anxious, if not fearful. What very often happens is information gets to the regulator in a really indirect, round-the-houses way, sometimes anonymously. My simple amendment is designed to open up the door but it is also a probing amendment in the hope that between now and Report we can have discussions with the Government on the optimum way of finding the remedy which the amendment seeks to supply. I finish by giving some idea of how much wider the Public Interest Disclosure Act is regarding “getting into the remedy”. Clause 1 of the Act inserts a four-page amendment into the Employment Rights Act 1996 and provides a multiplicity of definitions of who is a whistleblower for the purposes of the remedy. An example of its sensible provisions is that a “qualifying disclosure” is one that is made in good faith, is substantially true, is not made for personal gain and, “in all the circumstances of the case, it is reasonable for him to make”, and so on. It may be possible, at the next stage of the Bill, to import some of the language of the 1998 Act or, indeed, insert this amendment as an amendment to the 1998 Act.
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Lord Eatwell (Lab)My Lords, I am sure that the Treasury has studied carefully the experience of a measure developed in the United States…
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Lord Eatwell (Lab)Labour
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My Lords, I am sure that the Treasury has studied carefully the experience of a measure developed in the United States which is very similar to this and which has been remarkably successful over the past three or four years in bringing forward very important information to the regulatory authorities. When the noble Lord replies, perhaps he would reflect on the American experience and say how valuable it might be to replicate it here.
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Lord Brennan (Lab)My Lords, I support the amendment because it recognises the obligation of society to protect and deal justly with peopl…
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Lord Brennan (Lab)Non-affiliated
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My Lords, I support the amendment because it recognises the obligation of society to protect and deal justly with people who report serious wrongdoing, often at personal cost. The 1998 Act recognises that in its statutory effect. This modest amendment is designed to deal with the relationship between the whistleblower and his employer in relation to an employment claim. I invite the House to look at the question of whistleblowing in a much broader context. The more monolithic the organisation, the tighter its internal process controls, the less likely it is you will find out about wrongdoing. Almost paradoxically, the whistleblower becomes more important —single though that person usually is—according to the size of the enterprise about which he makes revelations. That explains to a considerable degree the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, about the effects upon these people of taking such a step. As I said at Second Reading, the four major banks are, in a broad sense, in charge of four times our gross domestic product. Whistleblowing in organisations as big as major banks is a highly exceptional event. In considering the role of the whistleblower in this context, the Government should, I suggest, have regard to public reaction if it is not seen to be the case that whistleblowers are not only protected but encouraged by legislation such as this. Regulators are there to regulate, not to police in the sense of investigation, detection and prosecution. That is not their usual role—certainly not historically—in this country. Therefore, the whistleblower in this country has even greater importance than he or she has in the United States. In the United States, the Dodd-Frank Act—the US counterpart of this legislation—introduced special provisions for whistleblowing, not just in banking but in financial institutions generally. It provided for payment to whistleblowers according to the extent of the misconduct that the whistleblower had revealed, as assessed by the SEC—the equivalent of our regulators. So, for example, if a whistleblower had disclosed LIBOR, the payment would reflect the importance of the discovery in relation to the economic loss that had been suffered. That is exceptionally important. The greater the danger to the whistleblower within his or her employment or in relation to their future and that of their family, the more they should be protected, including financially —but within reason, I accept. If you do not do that, you expose the whistleblower to what almost amounts to serious persecution. One has only to look at some of the events that have occurred in the National Health Service, where whistleblowers in different hospitals or hospital trusts have had their careers ruined, and there was even, I suspect, a suicide a year or two back. This is serious stuff. These are citizens revealing misconduct by great institutions, and no more civic an act could you expect an ordinary person to perform. In the United States as a result of Dodd-Frank, which was enacted in 2011, in the financial year 2012—the first full year after its enactment—there were 3,000 reports to the SEC. My enthusiasm and that of my noble friend Lord McFall led us to misunderstand each other. The Office of the Whistleblower is a permanent office within the SEC, and its purpose is to investigate claims and to co-operate with and look after the whistleblower. It works. When the new chairman of the SEC said publicly, “Now we are not only felt; we are feared”, one of the main reasons was the whistleblower threat. If we want to change culture, this is a very effective way of doing so. Good intentions count for a lot, but in changing culture, an intuitive fear of finishing up in jail counts for a lot more.
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord McFall and his colleagues on Amendment 98. I am also in favour of the two amen…
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)Labour
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My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord McFall and his colleagues on Amendment 98. I am also in favour of the two amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. My noble friend drew on his experience as a member of the banking commission when he talked eloquently about the serious matters behind LIBOR and the other issues that contribute to the need for serious whistleblowing legislation to protect those who are, in effect, doing the country a great service. In reading out those e-mails, my noble friend Lord McFall described the situation very graphically. At one stage I thought that he was going to break into the voice of Robert de Niro or Al Pacino, but his dulcet Dunbartonshire tones were sufficiently menacing to get across the message that the people involved in this crime were playing no games at all, and that it was very serious. The seriousness of the whole question of LIBOR was brought home to many of us yesterday when we opened our newspapers and saw photographs of people who had been appearing in court charged with offences related to the LIBOR scandal. The first thing that struck me was that the people were relatively young. The “ringleader”, if that is the appropriate term, is barely in his thirties now and was in his twenties in 2008 when the offences were committed, and the other two are not much older. Surely there were older, more experienced people further up the chain who must have known what was going on. If they did not know, they certainly should have done. That is the heart of the matter with regard to whistleblowing. Those responsible have to be held to account. Amendment 98 works by adding excluded activities under FiSMA or the Financial Services Act 2012 to the list of justifications for making what is known as a qualified disclosure. As noble Lords may know already, the list includes reporting that someone’s health and safety is in danger, damage to the environment, and a criminal offence that a company is not obeying the law or that someone has covered up wrongdoing. Those are generic terms, but many of them would apply to the finance sector. For the new banking system to work well and be policed effectively, protections have to be in place for staff who believe that wrongdoing exists in their organisation and they are not prepared simply to sit on their hands or, as happens in many cases, simply leave the job in the hope of finding employment somewhere else because they fear the consequences of raising the issue. This amendment is a further attempt to trigger a cultural change in financial services, which I think noble Lords on all sides have acknowledged is necessary. A bank employee may well wrestle with their conscience before deciding to break ranks; it is inevitable that they would. If an honest trader suspects that wrongdoing is under way and is considering informing the authorities, surely protections have to be in place for him or her to guard against a situation where they are held to be at fault. They are the victim because they perhaps lose their job, which in banking, of course, could be a very well paid job indeed. Once the word goes round that someone has left a bank or financial institution for this reason, how difficult will it be for him or her to find other employment? The LIBOR scandal illustrates the importance of making it easier to report wrongdoing. At the time that we now know the LIBOR rate was being manipulated, certain newspapers did speculate about the accuracy of those claims, and indeed about the accuracy of the LIBOR rate itself. But as we know, no one came forward because no one had the confidence, even if they had the evidence, to break the surface and bring the scandal out into the open. It would have been much easier had it been brought into the open then rather than when it eventually emerged. Surely it is essential that people feel confident about being able to do that in the future. Amendment 98 simply seeks to bolster the maintenance of law and order, something that I suggest we are entitled to expect that the Minister and his colleagues would agree with. The amendment would make it easier for the regulator and banks’ own compliance teams to do their job. We have heard from my noble friend Lord Brennan that this is being done very effectively in the USA. How could the coalition oppose it being introduced in this country as well?
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Lord Newby (LD)My Lords, the amendment would introduce a system under which the regulators would be able to award compensation against…
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Lord Newby (LD)Liberal Democrat
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My Lords, the amendment would introduce a system under which the regulators would be able to award compensation against a firm that mistreated a whistleblower. Whistleblowing is an important issue and the Government agree that we need to have a proper system for protecting whistleblowers in the financial services industry as elsewhere. However, I do not think that the noble Lord’s amendment would be a helpful addition to the legislative framework, particularly at this point. Let me explain why. In the summer, the Government launched a call for evidence on the whistleblowing framework to see whether there was a case for reforming the law protecting whistleblowers. This will be able to take account of submissions from the financial services regulators as well as from other interested parties. The call for evidence closes on 1 November and, once the evidence has been assessed, the Government will consider what if any action needs to be taken. It would not be sensible to prejudge the outcome of the call for evidence and implement changes without first looking at all the evidence available to support any changes. Moreover, the Government do not think that it would be appropriate to have different laws or protections for whistleblowers in different sectors. It would not be right to suggest that whistleblowers were more deserving of protection in some sectors than in others. I am sure that this is not what the noble Lord intended, but there is a risk that giving the regulators a special role in protecting whistleblowers in the financial services sector will be seen as special treatment for that sector. Finally, this power does not seem consistent with the role and competence of the financial services regulators. There is a comprehensive system of protection for employees in employment law, which applies across the board, protecting workers in every sector. It provides a route of redress using employment tribunals for individuals who have suffered a detriment or dismissal as a result of blowing the whistle.
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Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)I think my noble friend may have slightly missed the point. It is well documented that what happens normally is not tha…
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Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)Conservative
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I think my noble friend may have slightly missed the point. It is well documented that what happens normally is not that the whistleblower is dismissed—then, of course, there is the protection of employment law—but that he is stuck in that job and will never ever have any further promotion. I may be wrong, but I do not think there is any redress under employment law for that.
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, to the extent that there is or is not redress for that, the review which is under way will be looking at that…
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Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, to the extent that there is or is not redress for that, the review which is under way will be looking at that element of the system as well as everything else. The evidence submitted, including by those who are keen to see the law changed and strengthened in that respect, will be able to take account of all that.
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Lord Phillips of SudburyI am sorry to interrupt my noble friend again but it is important for the House to know a little more about this public…
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Lord Phillips of SudburyLiberal Democrat
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I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend again but it is important for the House to know a little more about this public consultation. I suspect that not one single person here tonight is aware that there is a consultation out there and that it is closing in a matter of a few days. Can the Minister tell us how widely this has been advertised, because it is news to me?
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, I am very happy to write to the noble Lord about the process that has been followed up until now. The whole p…
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Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, I am very happy to write to the noble Lord about the process that has been followed up until now. The whole process of this Bill has demonstrated, as the noble Lord has said, that there is tremendous activity—whether in terms of the regulators producing documents or of other regulatory initiatives, which are very hard to keep up with. I will ensure that we write as a matter of urgency to all noble Lords about this exercise. Before coming on to what the regulators are already doing in this area, I want to stress the basic point about this review. First, it is wide ranging. Secondly, it aims to beef up the current system. Thirdly, it will apply across the board because the Government do not believe that the financial services sector has a different status in terms of whistleblowing to, say, the oil and gas sector or the pharmaceutical sector. What we need is a common approach across all sectors. The FCA is already extremely active in supporting and encouraging whistleblowing. The number of whistleblowing contacts received is growing rapidly. There was a 370% increase between 2007 and 2012. The SEC has done very well. It received 3,001 reports in 2012. In the same year, the FSA received 3,929 reports. The impression has been given that the Americans have this system which is generating huge quantities of people coming forward and that the City is absolutely in fear to the extent that no one is coming forward. The figures totally contradict that view. I am not saying for a minute that the system is perfect, cannot be improved or will not be improved, but that the numbers of people coming through in the City are higher than is the case in the States. The FCA’s whistleblowing procedures have been revised to actively track whistleblowing outcomes across the FCA while cases are actively monitored to provide feedback, wherever legally possible, to whistleblowers. On the point that the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, raised, the regulators have a role in enforcement and protection. The Dodd-Frank Act brought in protections for whistleblowers which, to a considerable extent, already existed in the United Kingdom. The American scheme is of course not what is proposed in the UK, as the noble Lord said. Under that scheme, whistleblowers can receive a proportion of any penalty received from successful enforcement action arising from tips that they provide. That is different from what this amendment proposes. Although the PCBS said that it would like research to be undertaken in this area, it did not suggest an incentive scheme. The regulators are undertaking research, as requested by the parliamentary commission. The regulators are therefore already doing a lot, including undertaking research, while the Government are undertaking a review of the whole issue across all the sectors. In the light of that, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
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Lord McFall of AlcluithMy Lords, the Government’s response to every amendment is, “Manana, manana”. There is nothing in the response but, “Tom…
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Lord McFall of AlcluithCrossbench
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My Lords, the Government’s response to every amendment is, “Manana, manana”. There is nothing in the response but, “Tomorrow, tomorrow”. There is, for example, a public consultation that we know nothing about. As noble Lords have said tonight, this is a very modest proposal. The Minister really has the wrong end of the stick here when he asks why we should protect whistleblowers in the financial services industry and what is different here from in the oil and gas industry. The Government themselves think that it is different. Why? Because they appointed the noble Lords, Lord Lawson and Lord Turnbull, and me to a Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, along with Members of the House of Commons. We spent a year of our lives—10,000 questions and 180 hours in committee—before presenting a report to the Government. That is why the financial services industry is different from others.
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, is the noble Lord seriously suggesting that whistleblowing in the financial services sector—we are talking ab…
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Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, is the noble Lord seriously suggesting that whistleblowing in the financial services sector—we are talking about whistleblowing here—is of a different order of public interest from whistleblowing in, say, the pharmaceutical or oil industry?
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Lord McFall of AlcluithWe have had the biggest financial crisis ever but not one whistleblower. That is the magnitude of the problem which the…
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Lord McFall of AlcluithCrossbench
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We have had the biggest financial crisis ever but not one whistleblower. That is the magnitude of the problem which the Minister does not grasp and that is why we looked at this issue. Goodness gracious, look at the fines: £85 million for Barclays and £13 billion for JP Morgan today. There is a litany we could go through, so what is the problem? The Government set up a commission to look at culture and standards. What did the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards find? It found that the culture was rotten and the standards were abysmally low. This whistleblowing amendment—a modest amendment—is being put forward to ensure that we have a better culture, and that we have legal and compliance teams in companies that might have the nerve and confidence to go the FCA and say, “Look, there is wrongdoing in this company and we do not feel that we can assuage our conscience on this. We need to report it to the FCA to ensure that we have a better organisation here”. This has failed totally. That is the magnitude of the problem facing us and that is why we have this modest amendment. The USA was mentioned. We had two witnesses before us from the USA who were very clear that we did not scrape the ground with the FSA. My noble friend Lord Brennan has given his wisdom on the situation in the USA tonight. We are asking the Government and the FCA to look at the experience in the USA to see if that aspect can be adapted. As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, his charity did not have one person from the City. That backs up the evidence that we heard and gives the initiative to the FCA. That is the purpose of this amendment. We received representations from trade unions in a sub-committee evidence session. The trade unions were very clear to us that their members at the grass-roots level felt pressurised but were scared stiff to do anything about it. I have a number of examples but will give the Minister one in particular. An individual I have known in my own town of Dumbarton for years, who worked in one of the banks for 25 years, left to become a care worker at less than half the salary. I asked her why she left. She said, “John, I was being forced every week to sell products that were not only unsuitable for people but were making their lives miserable. I could not partake in that, so I left”. There was someone who had been committed for 25 years being pressured on issues like that. Surely we should have a system to say “That person has given loyal service. That’s a person who wants to serve their bank and their community. Let’s establish an appropriate structure so that we protect that person, and also make the company better”. I suggest to the Minister that there is a link between the almost £30 billion that we will be paying out in fines for PPI and the conduct of a company. If the proper procedure was in place and that information came up from the bottom, we probably would not have the abysmal situation we have with the £30 billion. This amendment is about not just changing the culture and standards but helping the safety and soundness of companies. It was a responsibility given to us, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, by the Government to give recommendations to change the culture. This is a sound way of doing that and I would have expected a more sympathetic and engaging response from the Minister than we received tonight.
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Lord Phillips of SudburyMy Lords, I should quickly make clear that the whistleblowing charity, Public Concern at Work, is not mine; I was merel…
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Lord Phillips of SudburyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, I should quickly make clear that the whistleblowing charity, Public Concern at Work, is not mine; I was merely the lawyer who set it up. However, it does wonderful work. I am delighted to hear that there is a public consultation. I am very anxious indeed that it may not have reached the parts that it should have reached. I ask the Minister if it possible for him to look into that and, if necessary, extend the consultation period for, say, a month.
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Lord Lawson of BlabyMy Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Turnbull and Lord McFall, also have their names to this amendment. It is the simplest a…
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Lord Lawson of BlabyConservative
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My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Turnbull and Lord McFall, also have their names to this amendment. It is the simplest amendment that we have before us. It may be because it is so simple that it was the first one that my right honourable friend the Chancellor rejected after the commission had published its recommendations. I think that he was hasty and I therefore hope that the Government will reconsider this. Briefly, as a result of the crisis that broke in 2008, the Government felt obliged to rescue a number of our biggest banks. The Government took control of these banks to the extent of more than 80% in the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was their biggest stake. This was the previous, Labour Government, and instead of straightforwardly taking this stake which the taxpayer owned—and the Government is a trustee for the taxpayer—they interposed this curious body called UK Financial Investments Ltd. We all know why this was done; I fully understand it and am extremely sympathetic. There is always a fear that a Labour Government might be engaged in a policy of bank nationalisation. In order to demonstrate that this was just a rescue operation and not bank nationalisation, they created this body, UKFI, to stand between the Government and the bank itself. Clearly, that no longer applies. There is no longer a thought that somehow this is nationalisation by the back door. Whatever else the coalition may be guilty of, it is not seeking to do that. So the whole rationale—the whole raison d’être—of UKFI has gone. Incidentally, not only was it a conclusion of the commission that UKFI should be abolished but it was also the strong view of the previous Governor of the Bank of England, now the noble Lord, Lord King. He made it absolutely plain. The reason is clear. UKFI gets the Government off the hook in a way that they should not be off the hook and obscures what can really go on. What has happened in practice is that when the Government have had difficult decisions to take, they say, “Oh, we can’t do it. UKFI owns the controlling stake”. When, however, the Government want to intervene—for example, the removal of Stephen Hester from the job of chief executive of RBS—they use their muscle. When it is convenient to act directly, they do; when it is not convenient, they have this charade of UKFI to give them an excuse for not doing what needs to be done. If, as a Government, you have the responsibility of the controlling shareholding, that should be quite clear and you should exercise that responsibility properly and be held to account for it. The Government say, “But we don’t have banking expertise”. Of course they do not have banking expertise. It does not matter because they can appoint the right people to the boards of the banks that they hold and, as we have suggested, they can also have a cadre of banking experts within the Treasury who can advise them on how to handle the situation. Like the previous Governor of the Bank of England, we have said that quite simply UKFI should be abolished. I suspect that many people secretly—or at least without admitting it—realise that that should have been done long ago, but it is not too late. The case of the Royal Bank of Scotland is particularly to the point. If UKFI had not existed, the Government would have had to face up earlier to the question of what to do about the Royal Bank of Scotland Group. The commission has said that there is a very strong case, which we have advocated, for the classic good bank/bad bank split. The good bank/bad bank split is a classic technique for dealing with major banking problems: put all the bad loans into the bad bank, as was done with Northern Rock, and not only can the good bank be privatised much more quickly than the group as a whole, it can get back to lending to SMEs much more effectively. One of the biggest economic problems we have is the difficulty of lending to SMEs. Some people say, “Money is very cheap. The rates could not go any lower: they are 0.5%”. They are not 0.5% for SMEs. A good SME is lucky if the rate of interest, including the charges it has to pay, is in single figures. Very often it is 10%, 11% or 12%. There is a real problem in this country that the banks have so much bad debt on their books, and are so scared of having any further bad debts—particularly since they have been told they have to strengthen their balance sheets and so on—that they are far too reluctant to lend. This is a real problem for the British economy. I am very glad that my right honourable friend the Chancellor has said that he will set up an inquiry and that he has asked the Rothschild Group to look into this, given that that was the recommendation of the banking commission. I hope that this evening my noble friend the Minister can tell us the outcome of the Rothschild investigation and what the Government’s intentions are. This is important to the British economy, bearing in mind the huge size of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group. As we have recommended, the way to clean this up is to abolish UKFI, which was there for a purpose that no longer exists. I very much hope that the Government will reconsider the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s overly hasty rejection of the modest and sensible recommendation of the commission. I beg to move.
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Lord Garel-Jones (Con)My Lords, I rise with some trepidation to take part in this debate. Earlier in Committee my noble friend Lord Lawson re…
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Lord Garel-Jones (Con)Conservative
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My Lords, I rise with some trepidation to take part in this debate. Earlier in Committee my noble friend Lord Lawson referred to Paul Volcker as a “wise old bird”. Someone like me is bound to observe that most of the wise old birds in this particular field in our country have taken part in this Committee, so I feel slightly out of my depth. I want to introduce a small piece of anecdotal evidence that casts some dubiety on the amendment just moved by my noble friend. I also declare an interest, in that I work for UBS. UBS was one of the lead banks in the recent transaction that placed £3.2 billion of shares in Lloyds Bank into the market, although I was not part of the team working on that transaction. When it was all over I spoke to one of the team and congratulated him on the success of the operation. Without any prompting, and for no reason at all, he said to me that UKFI had played a crucial part throughout the whole process. He had no need to say that to me; I had no connection with UKFI whatever. Although I am simply an observer in these matters and no expert, it makes sense to me for there to be some sort of independent buffer between the banks themselves and the Treasury. Your Lordships will no doubt be aware that UKFI has recently recruited James Leigh-Pemberton, who has a distinguished career in the City, as its chairman. I very much hope that the Minister will convey the message that UKFI is well regarded and has a secure future.
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Baroness Noakes (Con)My Lords, I will comment briefly on this amendment and will not comment, of course, from the perspective of the Royal B…
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Baroness Noakes (Con)Conservative
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My Lords, I will comment briefly on this amendment and will not comment, of course, from the perspective of the Royal Bank of Scotland. I will take your Lordships back to when I first worked at the Treasury, many years ago, when I was on secondment from my firm at the time. That was when there were lots of nationalised industries in the public sector. Worthy civil servants—and worthy Treasury civil servants, too—thought they knew how to manage the relationships between these large, complex, commercial organisations. They did not do it well. It was the right decision, therefore, when the previous Labour Government started to accrete new, substantial holdings in commercial organisations, to set up an arm’s length relationship to professionalise the handling of those organisations and their ultimate disposal, and to recognise, as that Government did at the time, that those holdings were not to be long-term holdings. I criticised the previous Government because it was not set up by statute, but in a shroud of secrecy without proper accountability arrangements in place. I believe, however, that the principle that civil servants are not the right people to manage these complex relationships with sophisticated organisations is the right one.
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Lord Turnbull (CB)My Lords, there was a similar organisation set up in my time, the Shareholder Executive. The Shareholder Executive is a…
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Lord Turnbull (CB)Crossbench
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My Lords, there was a similar organisation set up in my time, the Shareholder Executive. The Shareholder Executive is a body attached to BIS, as it is now called, and it creates a centre of expertise for the management of shareholders. What it does not do is claim to be the decision-maker. It is all very well to have the expertise—we need the expertise—but there is a pretence that decisions relating to RBS and LBG are being taken by UKFI as opposed to being taken by the Treasury on the advice of UKFI. It is a pretence that when it suits you, you can decide, and when it suits you, you can hand it on to someone else. At the moment, with the change of leadership in RBS—the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, may not want to comment on this—we do not know whether that was a decision of the RBS board, UKFI or the Treasury. It ought to be clear who took that decision. You can have an advisory body—in this case, almost an executive body—but not one that claims to be the decision-maker, which is the pretence of the UKFI situation.
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The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Deighton) (Con)My Lords, the intention of the amendment is to transfer into HM Treasury the function of managing the Government’s shar…
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The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Deighton) (Con)Conservative
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My Lords, the intention of the amendment is to transfer into HM Treasury the function of managing the Government’s shareholdings, in particular in RBS and Lloyds. As my noble friend Lord Lawson has pointed out, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his Mansion House speech in June, has already made it clear that he rejects this particular PCBS recommendation. As has been pointed out in a number comments already, UKFI was not a creature set up by this Government; it was set up by the previous Government when they made the initial capital injections into RBS, Lloyds, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, with the idea of being able to manage these investments on an arm’s-length commercial basis. So that was the genesis. This group works closely with the management of RBS and Lloyds to assure itself of their approach to the strategy and to hold management to account for their performance. RBS and Lloyds are led by their management and board in the interests of all shareholders, including the taxpayer. So, while it may be possible to imagine different arrangements to fulfil these objectives—you can make the arguments and the pros and cons of the different ways of doing it—the current ones work well, as my noble friend Lord Garel-Jones has said, and it would not make sense to change them at this stage. So, just as my noble friend Lord Lawson said it is a simple amendment, there is a simple reason to reject it—it does not make any practical sense. UKFI is working fine and the time and effort it would take to pull it back into the Treasury and to reorient all that work there would distract our efforts on the important work that is currently going on. My noble friend Lord Lawson referred to the review at RBS in particular, which we are two-thirds of the way through, and the bad bank/good bank option. I am afraid I am going to disappoint my noble friend. I am not going to tell him what the result is but it will be ready this autumn and we will announce the outcome and the rationale behind it. The matter is being pursued with great urgency and the last thing we want to do at the moment is to destabilise the arrangements for conducting that important analysis, which is really the most important thing. I reiterate that UKFI is staffed by some very good top people. I have worked with them and I have seen the work that they do. Frankly, we have been able to recruit top-class people to do this work on our behalf. I can assure the Committee that the Government continue to value the role that they play. It was demonstrated again, as my noble friend pointed out, by the role they played in advising the Chancellor on the successful divestment of 15.5% of the Government’s shareholding in Lloyds at 75p per share. They will carry on looking at the full range of options for RBS and managing the timing of the subsequent tranches of the sale of Lloyds back into private ownership. I am grateful to the PCBS and the noble Lord for raising these issues, but the Government consider that UKFI has a vital role to play which it is performing well. I therefore cannot support the amendment and I urge the noble Lord to withdraw it.
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Lord Lawson of BlabyMy noble friend will not be surprised to hear that I am wholly unconvinced by his reply; nevertheless I shall please hi…
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Lord Lawson of BlabyConservative
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My noble friend will not be surprised to hear that I am wholly unconvinced by his reply; nevertheless I shall please him by withdrawing the amendment.
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Lord EatwellMy Lords, Amendment 101 in my name and the names of my noble friends Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord McFall goes to the heart…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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My Lords, Amendment 101 in my name and the names of my noble friends Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord McFall goes to the heart of the change in culture which all of us wish to see in the relationship between banks and their customers, particularly their retail customers. Our objective is for banks to see their relationship with their retail customers as ensuring the financial success and security of those customers as far as may be possible, rather than seeing them as entities from which to make profits. A ring-fenced body should have a fiduciary duty towards its customers in the operation of core services, and a duty of care towards its customers across the financial services sector with respect to other duties. Following the passing of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, the Financial Services Authority developed the notion that customers should be treated fairly. It did an enormous amount of work developing various rules, instructions and procedures whereby customers would be treated fairly. This was a dismal failure. PPI and the interest rate swap stories demonstrate that beyond all reasonable doubt. This was not a failure because of the failure of the regulators as such and their intentions. They were well intentioned, and they were focused on important issues. It was a failure because the culture of the banks was to see customers as entities with which to trade and from which profits would be made. We need to change that. The amendment will put us in tune with developments that have also been perceived to be necessary in the United States, where the SEC now has the authority to impose a fiduciary duty on brokers who give investment advice. It is the same thematic development. A stronger duty of care would ensure that industry has to take customers’ interests into account when designing products and has to provide advice and support throughout the product life cycle, something which has clearly been lacking in recent scandalous events. This will increase consumer protection and help to restore confidence of the retail customer in banks. It will raise standards of conduct because banks will know they are responsible for acting according to these duties. I am well aware that there is a general common law responsibility for duty of care, but the importance of this amendment is that the fiduciary duty would be reflected in the activities, responsibilities and powers of the regulators, not simply something enforceable under common law. That is why a fiduciary responsibility akin to that elsewhere in financial legislation, but here expressed generally within the context of the ring-fenced bank, would add significantly not just to consumer protection but to the character, behaviour and culture of ring-fenced banks. I beg to move.
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Baroness NoakesCan the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, explain how this fiduciary duty and duty of care would be enforced? I think he mentio…
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Baroness NoakesConservative
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Can the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, explain how this fiduciary duty and duty of care would be enforced? I think he mentioned a moment ago that it would somehow draw regulators in, but I cannot find anything in his amendment that places any corresponding powers or duties on regulators. I cannot see that a duty of care will make any difference whatever if ordinary consumers—ordinary customers of the banks—are expected to litigate personally on the basis of it.
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Lord EatwellSurely the point is that by establishing a fiduciary duty a regulated entity would be expected to pursue exactly those…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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Surely the point is that by establishing a fiduciary duty a regulated entity would be expected to pursue exactly those duties. Therefore a regulated entity or other authorised person would be deemed by the regulator to be required to follow exactly those duties. If the noble Baroness thinks that this is too weak, I will be very happy to bring a stronger duty of care back on Report.
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Lord Phillips of SudburyMy Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, asked an extraordinary question because there is no more onerous duty than the…
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Lord Phillips of SudburyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, asked an extraordinary question because there is no more onerous duty than the fiduciary duty. It is a novel and maybe a highly effective way of dealing with a great many of the concerns that have occupied this House over the last few days in Committee. An important part of the amendment is that the core activities and services are subject to a fiduciary duty, and other services to a duty of care. Given the big difference in responsibility, is it sufficiently clear what is and what is not a core duty?
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Lord EatwellCore duties are defined in the Bill.
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Lord EatwellLabour
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Core duties are defined in the Bill.
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Lord Phillips of SudburyI thank the noble Lord.
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Lord Phillips of SudburyLiberal Democrat
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I thank the noble Lord.
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Lord McFall of AlcluithMy Lords, I will briefly speak in support of this amendment. My noble friend Lord Eatwell spoke of treating customers f…
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Lord McFall of AlcluithCrossbench
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My Lords, I will briefly speak in support of this amendment. My noble friend Lord Eatwell spoke of treating customers fairly. I remember, going back to 2002, when the FSA, bless its heart, introduced this to the industry. The FSA told me that it was a hugely uphill struggle. I well remember having a conversation with the chairman of one of the banks, who said to me, “Treating customers fairly? I don’t know what that FSA is up to, because I’ve always treated my customers fairly”. The gap between what the FSA was trying to do and the mentality of some people in the industry was huge. I remember being at a seminar with John Kay, who has written a great article in today’s Financial Times that I have already referred to. He said that a duty of care, if it was imposed on the banks, would be “transformational”. I think he said that for the following reason. There is today an imbalance between the customer and the bank—the term for that is symmetry of knowledge—which has led to many of the scandals. Time after time on the parliamentary banking standards commission, when we ask chairmen and chief executives exactly why mis-selling occurred or why the grievous omissions took place in their organisation, they say that they did not know anything about it. There is, therefore, a hiatus between the top and below. One of the amusing aspects of my time as chair of the Treasury Committee was speaking informally to senior executives in the banks who came along to the Treasury Committee and said, “What you did to the chairman today was good because it allows us to educate him”—or her, although it is largely him—“about what is happening in the organisation”. A lot of them do not know what is happening. If we had this duty of care, that responsibility would lie at the very top. During the deliberations of the parliamentary banking standards commission, I suggested that there should be an annual meeting between the chairmen and chief executives of these institutions, and the regulatory authorities, so that there was a sign-off on how they do their duty and how they serve the interests of their institution and their employees in the wider society. That information is not made public, but at least there is that accountability at the top between the regulator and the chief executive. At present, we do not have that. Having the duty of care would make those at the top much more alive to what is going on in their organisation. I have received evidence in the banking commission, particularly from the lawyers who were advising us, that the term “duty of care” has a specific legal meaning in the law of torts, and tests to establish whether a duty of care exists and whether it has been breached are a fundamental tenet of common law. In the context of banks and their customers, it is not clear what a duty of care would look like in practice. I know that there are huge legal hurdles to overcoming that, but there is a basic, common-sense and moral purpose to the concept of duty of care, and I think it is one that we will refer to again on Report. I would like the Minister seriously to consider this amendment and ensure in some way or other that, as the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards stated in paragraph 416: “Banks need to demonstrate that they are fulfilling a duty of care to their customers, embedded in their approach to designing products, providing understandable information to consumers and dealing with complaints”.
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Lord BrennanMy Lords, perhaps I may take up the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. Paragraph (a) of the proposed new…
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Lord BrennanNon-affiliated
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My Lords, perhaps I may take up the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. Paragraph (a) of the proposed new clause refers to a “fiduciary duty” by the ring-fenced body. In practical terms that means a duty exercised by, ultimately, the board of directors. The body acts through it. The practical consequences of such a duty, which does not involve enforceability by the regulators, are twofold. First, if the board of a bank breaches its fiduciary duty to customers in this way, it is perfectly reasonable for the shareholders to refuse to indemnify it in respect of any claims made by customers on the basis that it has breached a statutory duty, which could not conceivably be said to have been acting in the shareholders’ interests. That is the first practical consequence. It is a deterrent. Secondly, although I have not checked this yet, I suspect that in the field of commercial insurance you would not be able to get D&O insurance for protection in respect of a fiduciary duty until you have satisfied the insurability test of having acted reasonably and in accordance with commonly accepted standards of probity and good behaviour in the commercial sector. Therefore, the point is answered, I suspect, by practical consequences.
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Lord DeightonMy Lords, this amendment is an opportunity to revisit the imposition of fiduciary duties or duties of care on financial…
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Lord DeightonConservative
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My Lords, this amendment is an opportunity to revisit the imposition of fiduciary duties or duties of care on financial services firms. The other place debated the same amendment at the Committee and Report stages of this Bill. Of course, no one in this House is going to disagree with the proposition that customers need a better deal from their banks, whether we call it treating customers fairly, having better standards or putting customers first. The Government have been keen, for example, to see more competition between banks as another way of addressing this concern. We all want to see better standards in the banking industry and a return to the days when the customer relationship mattered and the customer came first. We want the leadership of banks to appreciate that it is also in their long-term interests in building successful banking businesses. The Government’s amendments so far, which implement the recommendations of the PCBS, will be an important step in the round in that respect. However, I note that the commission did not itself recommend the introduction of either a fiduciary duty or a duty of care. To cut to the chase, the Government do not consider that the introduction of either a fiduciary duty or a duty of care in legislation would help to drive up these standards within ring-fenced banks. First, banks are already subject to a wide range of legal duties. Most obviously, they are subject to contractual obligations to their customers. Any banking relationship or transaction is subject to a contract between the bank and the customer. Of course, a bank is subject to obligations under FiSMA and the regulator’s rules. Further, the Government’s amendment on banking standards rules means that in future senior managers and ordinary employees will also be subject to conduct rules. Therefore, it is not clear that imposing a fiduciary obligation on a bank would add any value. The fiduciary obligation is the kind of obligation that a director owes to a company, or a trustee owes to a beneficiary under a trust. It is an appropriate obligation when one person is acting on behalf of another or dealing with another’s property on their behalf. However, deposits with a bank are not property held on trust, so a fiduciary obligation would have no place in the contractual relationship between a bank and its customer. Similarly, it is not clear what a duty of care—
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Lord Phillips of SudburyI hesitate to interrupt my noble friend at this time of night, but there is an important issue in relation to what he s…
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Lord Phillips of SudburyLiberal Democrat
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I hesitate to interrupt my noble friend at this time of night, but there is an important issue in relation to what he said that needs clarification. He said a couple of times that the relationship between a bank and its customer is a contractual one, and therefore that that was sort of QED. The problem is that until not long ago all banks, in the small print of their contracts, which they knew full well that customers would not read, put material which, had the customers read it, would have led them to not agree the contract. In that situation, the contract said such and such, but the purport was wholly antithetical to the real interests of the customer. How does my noble friend deal with that situation, if he is rejecting the fiduciary concept?
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Lord DeightonIt is clear that the essential contractual relationship still exists, regardless of the fine print. It is not clear wha…
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Lord DeightonConservative
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It is clear that the essential contractual relationship still exists, regardless of the fine print. It is not clear what a duty of care would add to the existing contractual obligations or regulatory requirements to which the ring-fenced body is subject. The primary duty of a ring-fenced bank is to repay its borrowings, such as deposits, when they fall due, in accordance with the terms of its contracts. If a ring-fenced bank does that and complies with its regulatory obligations, such as those relating to ring-fencing or leverage, it is hard to see what a duty of care would do to make it care more for its customers, inside or outside the financial services industry. Therefore, the Government firmly believe that it would be better to impose specific and focused requirements, and standards of business, on banks, than to rely on high-level, generic concepts such as a duty of care. Banks can comply more easily with specific requirements. Customers and regulators can more effectively hold to account the banks, and, if appropriate, their senior managers, when they do not comply. Moreover, if our ultimate objective is to improve the deal that customers get from their banks, one of the most effective and direct ways to achieve this is surely by enhancing competition. Banks must be spurred to treat their customers better by the threat of the customers voting with their feet. Through the introduction of the measures in this Bill, including the changes to the regulator’s objectives and powers, and the new payments regulator, we believe that a better deal can be achieved. Imposing a duty of care or a fiduciary duty would not give banks or their senior managers a clear understanding of what conduct is expected of them. It would not provide a viable and effective means of holding banks to account, and it would not benefit consumers. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord will agree to withdraw the amendment.
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Lord McFall of AlcluithOn the duty of care, at the present moment if an individual opens a bank account, they get 170 pages of dense text to l…
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Lord McFall of AlcluithCrossbench
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On the duty of care, at the present moment if an individual opens a bank account, they get 170 pages of dense text to look through. No one is going to look through that. If a duty of care were imposed, does the Minister not think that banks would look at that again and perhaps fillet a lot of the information, so that the information that went to the customer would be readily understood?
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Lord DeightonI certainly agree with the noble Lord’s observation that sometimes the way in which business is done clearly is not in…
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Lord DeightonConservative
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I certainly agree with the noble Lord’s observation that sometimes the way in which business is done clearly is not in the interests of the customer. However, the Government do not believe that the duty of care is the right way to address those kinds of problems.
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Lord EatwellMy Lords, that was a very unsatisfactory answer. It was both analytically weak and unsatisfactory in terms of the noble…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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My Lords, that was a very unsatisfactory answer. It was both analytically weak and unsatisfactory in terms of the noble Lord’s argument. Let us first deal with the economics. As the noble Lord well knows, in the face of asymmetric information, competition is not necessarily efficient. He knows that: he learnt that at Cambridge. In those circumstances, to argue simply that competition will be an effective means of establishing a satisfactory relationship between the bank and its customers is simply analytically wrong. We ought to take that into account. Then the noble Lord said that there was a series of relationships: contractual duties, the relationships set out in FiSMA and the senior manager regulations. The first two of those have existed since 2000. They did not work, so let us not rely on contractual duties which have been there all the time and have been happily beavering away. Did they protect the customer from PPI? No, they did not do that successfully. Did they protect the customer from interest rate swap selling? No, they did not do that either. It is no good relying on these contractual duties or on various elements of treating customers fairly in FiSMA. The senior manager regime, although it stiffens up the responsibilities of managers, does not change the actual structure of the relationship. The noble Lord said something towards the end of his reply that was really quite extraordinary. He said that if bankers were told that they had a fiduciary duty and a duty of care, they would not have a clear understanding of what they were required to do. I find that quite astonishing. I have a sense that trustees have a very clear understanding of the fiduciary issue of what they have to do and all these terribly clever bankers ought to be able to suss that out as well. The idea that they do not have a clear understanding is just unbelievable. Then the noble Lord said, “But of course, the trustee relationship applies to a situation which is appropriate only when one person is acting for another”. The majority of retail customers who deposit their money in the bank think the bank is going to be operating for them. They think that is what is happening. I know that many bankers therefore regard them as naïve, but that is what people actually believe. That is what we, on this side, believe should actually be the case. The noble Lord then said, “Well, of course, I do agree there should be a duty of care, but it should be specific and focused”. We all know that when you try to make specific lists of issues, the endeavour goes wrong because of the things left off the list. The things that are left off the list are the areas where we will see further consumer scandals appearing. It is the responsibility of this Government to protect consumers in this country and to protect bank depositors within ring-fenced banks. It is a responsibility that this Government are clearly shirking. This amendment would provide a significant cultural change within the banking system—a cultural change which is desperately needed. I can assure the noble Lord that we will return to this forcefully on Report. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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Lord EatwellMy Lords, I have commented on a number of occasions that despite all the considerable endeavours since the financial cr…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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My Lords, I have commented on a number of occasions that despite all the considerable endeavours since the financial crisis by the Treasury itself, by the FSA as it then was—not by the Bank of England—by the Independent Commission on Banking and now by the parliamentary commission, there has been no significant thought applied to the manner in which the banking system could be fundamentally restructured. All those discussions have taken place within the context of the banking system as it is currently structured. There has been no, let us say, Standard Oil approach to breaking up that company or an AT&T approach to say that there should be some fundamental restructuring of the overall banking system. Instead, we have taken the structure as it is and examined how we can make it work better: for example, by a ring-fence, bail-in clauses, resolution regimes or whatever. The only significant change in the structure of the banking industry—the separation of TSB from Lloyds—was done under the instructions of the European Union. It was not a policy developed here in the UK. This amendment does not propose anything dramatic such as a break-up of the larger banks so that they are small enough to fail, but instead says that when there are sales of banking assets which are in Treasury ownership, the Treasury ought at least to go away and think about this. It ought to tell us how the structure of the sale is in the best interests of the taxpayer and think about the impact on competition—I am sure the noble Lord would like that—on customer choice and, indeed, on the rate of economic growth. It ought also to look at the relationship to the ring-fence and whether there might be a development of regional banking, an idea suggested by a number of commentators. All that the amendment seeks is to say, “Let us please have some thought about the overall structure of the banking industry in this respect”. We know that the industry consists of entities which are too big to fail. We have one degree of separation with the TSB. There is an endeavour to encourage entry into the banking industry but we all know that it will take a long time for new entities to achieve the scale to be significantly competitive, except perhaps in the occasional niche of the industry. Before we rush further into selling the state-owned banking assets, let us at least consider whether those assets could be used and deployed in a significant restructuring of the banking industry. That would achieve the goals of making the industry more stable and a more effective entity in the overall operation of the UK economy. I beg to move.
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Lord DeightonNoble Lords will know that the Chancellor has already set out at the Mansion House the next stage of the Government’s p…
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Lord DeightonConservative
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Noble Lords will know that the Chancellor has already set out at the Mansion House the next stage of the Government’s plan to take the banking system from rescue to recovery. For Lloyds, the Chancellor has taken the first steps to return Lloyds to the private sector and will continue to consider options for further share sales. Value for money for the taxpayer will be the overriding consideration for disposals. There is no pre-fixed timescale for share sales and, given the size of the taxpayer’s stake in Lloyds, the disposal process is likely to involve further multiple stages over time. For RBS, however, share sales are still some way off. We discussed this earlier when we debated my noble friend Lord Lawson’s amendment. The Treasury is currently examining the case for creating a bad bank for RBS risky assets. As discussed, this review is still ongoing and will be published later in the autumn. Setting out public options for structural change may be advisable in some cases, as the Chancellor’s announcement of the RBS bad bank review makes clear. However, the Government will need to judge in each case whether to do so, given the risk of generating uncertainty and speculation about likely outcomes. Similarly, selling large numbers of shares in the market is a very commercially sensitive matter: for example, in the case of Lloyds. Any communications from government in advance of placing shares could be destabilising and affect the price that the Government get for the shares. Publication of a report as outlined in the proposed amendment could undermine the Government’s ability to sell shares quickly in favourable market conditions. This could significantly reduce value for money for the taxpayer in that case. The Government firmly agree that all the topics set out in the amendment need to be carefully considered by any Government in making their decisions relating to the sale of banking assets. UKFI, which we talked about earlier, was established with a very clear emphasis on value for money in executing its core mandate of devising means of exiting the Government’s shareholdings in the banks. In doing so, it is required to pay due regard to the maintenance of financial stability and act in a way that promotes competition. The amendment seeks to improve accountability. Many mechanisms already provide accountability. On value for money, the Government are scrutinised against the general principles set out in the Green Book. UKFI is also accountable to Parliament through the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and has a mandate to secure value for money for the taxpayer. Moreover, the Treasury and UKFI are accountable directly, through the accounting officer mechanism, to the National Audit Office and to the Public Accounts Committee. Indeed, UKFI published a report, following the sale of Northern Rock, setting out the rationale for returning the bank to the private sector at that time. The National Audit Office completed a review of the sales process and published a lengthy report on it, which was considered at a session of the Public Accounts Committee. The sale of Northern Rock demonstrated the Government’s commitment to transparency on the sale of their banking assets and the ability for bodies such as the National Audit Office and Parliament to scrutinise the decisions of government on these matters. Finally, the Government are accountable for their decision to Parliament, including through the Treasury Select Committee and in public debate. Overall, it is not clear what value would be added by this mandatory reporting requirement and it might well be detrimental to the objectives it aims to deliver, particularly to value for money. I hope that the noble Lord will therefore agree to withdraw the amendment.
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Lord Turnbull (CB)The first half of a paragraph in the PCBS report asked for a report on the good bank/bad bank option by September: it i…
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Lord Turnbull (CB)Crossbench
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The first half of a paragraph in the PCBS report asked for a report on the good bank/bad bank option by September: it is going to be a bit late but we are told it is coming soon. The next two or three sentences were on the same subject as the amendment: looking at a wider range of options. Is the Minister telling the House that the Government will fulfil the first half of this PCBS recommendation but not the second half?
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Lord DeightonThe Government will announce the conclusions of the good bank/bad bank review and the rationale for why that is the opt…
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Lord DeightonConservative
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The Government will announce the conclusions of the good bank/bad bank review and the rationale for why that is the option being pursued. We will be addressing the second half of the undertaking in describing the rationale.
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Lord TurnbullThe Government have got to good bank status with RBS. Are they not proposing to do any further analysis on what might h…
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Lord TurnbullCrossbench
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The Government have got to good bank status with RBS. Are they not proposing to do any further analysis on what might happen to the good bank bit that remains?
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Lord DeightonThe first thing we have to determine is what we are proposing to do with the good bank/bad bank. Does the split make se…
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Lord DeightonConservative
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The first thing we have to determine is what we are proposing to do with the good bank/bad bank. Does the split make sense and on what basis does it work? We will subsequently look at what we do with the separate parts.
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Lord EatwellMy Lords, that was not a very satisfactory answer. First, market sensitivity is an extraordinary red herring. Whoever w…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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My Lords, that was not a very satisfactory answer. First, market sensitivity is an extraordinary red herring. Whoever wrote that bit should not be allowed to write any bits again. This is not about market sensitivity: it is about the overall structure of the banking sector and any issues of market sensitivity would, of course, be kept carefully out. Anybody would do that, so it is a really silly argument. Turning to the good bank/bad bank story, value for money with respect to the disposal of assets is obviously an important component, but so is the future of the banking industry and its performance in relation to the UK economy as a whole, especially its support of the real economy in the provision of financial services. That aspect does not seem to have been considered. After all, the good bank/bad bank story is essentially a defensive move. It is dealing with a bank which is hampered—or potentially hampered; we will see what the report says—by its current mixture of assets and liabilities, particularly non-performing assets. The good bank/bad bank split is a defensive measure; a device for ensuring that you have an operation in the good bank which we hope can start increasing lending, as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, said, particularly to the SME sector. However, Amendment 103 is asking for something different, which the Minister did not actually address. It is asking for some thought about what the structure of the banking industry should look like in future. Are we simply going to repair what we have in the best way we can or do we want something really different? Could progress towards that “something different” be made in the sale of state-owned assets? It seems to me that that was what the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, was talking about when he referred to the second element of the banking commission’s recommendations. Clearly, this recommendation has not been taken on board by the Government. Perhaps it has simply been overlooked; they might look at it now and think more seriously about it. I am sure that we will be returning to this issue later. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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Lord EatwellMy Lords, this amendment refers to portable account numbers. I am sure that noble Lords will have read in yesterday’s F…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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My Lords, this amendment refers to portable account numbers. I am sure that noble Lords will have read in yesterday’s Financial Times the story about the voluntary endeavour by the banks to increase the possibility of customers switching their accounts from one bank to another. The current switching drive does not include portability of account numbers. As the Financial Times boldly declared: “Account switching drive fails to dislodge customers”. The general assessment is that the complications associated with the non-portability of account numbers—that is, the complications of changing account numbers—are a significant disincentive to customers to switch their account from one bank to another. This is of course a considerable diminution of competition. The Government have argued very strongly that they are in favour of competition and choice in the retail sector. The noble Lord has repeated that position in discussing some of the amendments that we have already looked at this evening. However, here there is a clear opportunity to increase the possibility of competition in a very concrete way through the portability of account numbers. The noble Lord will recall how successful this process has been in the telephone industry. The portability of telephone numbers has very evidently provided a significant competitive boost, which suggests that being able to move a number would increase competition significantly in the banking industry as well. I understand that this would be more difficult within the banking industry. For example, the amendment refers specifically to both portable account numbers and sort codes. That makes the issue more difficult because two individuals who bank at different banks may have the same account number but, of course, different sort codes; their entire identification is in the combination of the two. Therefore, a new means of identifying the core bank would have to be developed, and I understand that that would have various knock-on effects. However, the idea that this would all cost £5 billion, as has been argued by the banking industry, seems to be vastly overstated. We had the same situation with telephony. We were told that this process was going to cost an enormous amount but, in the end, introducing transferable telephone numbers resulted in a tiny proportion of the costs which the industry had said it would need to incur. Therefore, if we are really going to get competition and choice for the consumer, this seems to be a necessary step. The attempt to develop such competition through facilitating switching but without portability has, it seems, failed. Given that, if the Government are really going to put themselves on the side of the consumer in a competitive market, it is their responsibility to require the possibility of portable account numbers. I beg to move.
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, it goes without saying that the Government are fully behind the objective of increasing competition in bankin…
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Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, it goes without saying that the Government are fully behind the objective of increasing competition in banking and making sure that customers who wish to switch banks can do so without impediment. The notion of portable account numbers was considered by the Independent Commission on Banking and in its final report the ICB chose to recommend a new account switching service over portable account numbers. It considered that such a service, if designed correctly, would provide the majority of the same benefits as portability, but with significantly reduced risk and cost. The Government acted quickly on this recommendation to secure a commitment from the banking industry to deliver current account switching in two years. This was an ambitious timetable for such a big project, but the banks have met the challenge. The new current account switching service was launched on schedule in September and covers almost 100% of the current account market. It has been designed to meet all the ICB’s criteria for tackling customer concerns over switching and to give customers the confidence they need to make the banks improve their services by ensuring that their customers can vote with their feet. However, it is important that the new system delivers on its promises. That is why the Government continue to engage closely with the Payments Council, which has delivered the service on behalf of the industry, on the progress of switching.
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Lord McFall of AlcluithThe noble Lord mentioned the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and talked about account portability. But th…
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Lord McFall of AlcluithCrossbench
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The noble Lord mentioned the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and talked about account portability. But that was not as firm a recommendation as he has suggested, because one of the questions we asked was: why can the banks not allocate an account number that works in the way that mobile telephone numbers do, so that people can swap them around in the same way? The banks replied that the IT costs would be too high, but a cursory examination—that is all we did—of the IT aspect indicated that there were legacy problems with the IT. As we have seen with the horrendous examples involving RBS and others, the IT system is in a very poor state. So now is the ideal time to raise our ambitions and ensure that we get for bank customers the portability that telephone customers have.
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, I did not mention the parliamentary commission; I was referring to the Independent Commission on Banking. Non…
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Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, I did not mention the parliamentary commission; I was referring to the Independent Commission on Banking. None the less, I shall come to the substantive point that the noble Lord has just made. As I was saying, to aid transparency we have asked the Payments Council to publish statistics regularly, including switching volumes on a monthly basis and more detailed statistics every quarter, which include data on awareness and confidence in the new service. The Government consider that making this information public is the best way to hold the current account switching service to account. As has been mentioned, the Payments Council has just published the first set of data, covering the four-week period following the switching service becoming fully operational. The numbers show that 89,000 switches were completed—an 11% increase on the 80,000 completed during the same period last year. I am a great fan of the Financial Times, but to describe a scheme that has been running for a month as a failure, when it has already got 9,000 extra people to switch, is clearly complete rubbish. Account portability is a more complicated issue. I am not necessarily disagreeing with the noble Lord, Lord McFall, but the only way to make a properly informed assessment as to whether, or how, steps towards portable account numbers should be taken is to conduct a comprehensive analysis. I must say, almost in parenthesis, that I do not believe that the analogy with telephone numbers takes us as far as might appear at first sight. For a start, as an individual I am quite happy if lots of people know my telephone number —but I am very unhappy if anybody knows my bank account details. This means that I have a completely different view about how I want to deal with that account. That is one of a number of different reasons why this is a complicated issue. It is not, however, an issue that the Government have just pushed to one side. We have made a commitment to ask the new payment systems regulator to undertake the comprehensive analysis that is required. There has not yet been a proper study of account portability in the UK, but it is clear that operating the payments systems alongside account portability would be one of the significant challenges. That is why we think that the payment systems regulator is the right body to carry out this work. It will have the appropriate expertise and will be able to give an independent view. To be clear, the payment systems regulator will have the powers described in subsection (2) of the proposed new clause. There would be no need to confer new powers on the regulator in order to implement the recommendations of a review. In order to get a complete picture of what benefits account portability could bring, the experience of the current account switching service will need to be fully considered. Therefore, the Government expect the success of the switching service to be firmly within the scope of the payment systems regulator’s view of portability. The switching service is new and the regulator is not yet established. In our view, the logical step is to let them both become properly established and bedded in and then have a proper and comprehensive analysis. On the basis of that, a decision can be taken.
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Lord EatwellThe noble Lord just said that the payment systems regulator is going to be asked to do this. What timetable is the regu…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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The noble Lord just said that the payment systems regulator is going to be asked to do this. What timetable is the regulator going to be given?
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Lord NewbyThe regulator will be asked to make this one of its top priorities once it has been established, but it is impossible t…
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Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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The regulator will be asked to make this one of its top priorities once it has been established, but it is impossible to say at this point that it will have to do it within three or six months. We think that that would be overly prescriptive. However, it is one of the priority tasks that it will be given from its inception.
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Lord EatwellMy Lords, that is why the amendment specifies 12 months. It seems that what the Government are saying is that they are…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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My Lords, that is why the amendment specifies 12 months. It seems that what the Government are saying is that they are behind the concept of competition but they are not behind the means of making that concept actually work. However, I must say that it is encouraging that the payment systems regulator is being asked to study this matter. It would be more encouraging if we were given some clarity that this will not simply be kicked into touch but will actually be presented to Parliament within a given timescale. This is a matter of considerable importance if the Government are serious about competition and giving competitive advantage to consumers. It is therefore a matter to which we must inevitably return. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
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Lord Sharkey (LD)My Lords, I will briefly argue in favour of four propositions. The first is that payday loan charges are much too high;…
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Lord Sharkey (LD)Liberal Democrat
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My Lords, I will briefly argue in favour of four propositions. The first is that payday loan charges are much too high; secondly, that the current action on payday loans, although it is welcome, will not fix the central problem; thirdly, that we already have plenty of evidence for how to fix this problem; and fourthly, it is possible to act now to benefit payday loan customers and there is no need to wait. The first proposition is that payday loan charges are much too high, and there is probably no need for me to argue the point extensively in this Chamber. Many Members of the Committee will agree that the scale of the charges amounts to exploitation of the poorest and the most desperate, and perhaps even that these charges are an affront to social justice, or even a sense of common humanity. In fact, there are established markets where the payday loan business flourishes with much smaller charges, of which the United States is a prime example. I shall talk more about the regulatory regime in the United States in a moment. The second proposition is that the current action, although it is welcome, will not fix the central problem. The FCA, which will take over regulatory responsibility for the sector in April next year, published a consultation paper earlier this month. The paper noted that: “We consider that the high-cost short-term credit sector poses a potentially high risk to consumers in financial difficulty”. It put forward five key proposals that would require lenders to, “assess the potential for a loan to adversely affect the customer’s financial situation; limit the number of times they can seek payment using a continuous payment authority; limit the number of times a loan can be ‘rolled over’; inform customers about sources of debt advice before refinancing a loan; put risk warnings on loan adverts”. All these requirements were broadly welcomed, but there was no proposal to address the very high cost of payday loans themselves. The FCA confined itself to saying only that: “After we start regulating consumer credit, our supervision teams will consider firms’ fees and charges practices to decide if we need to intervene further”. That was it, but it is these fees and charges that are the cause of the present hardship and difficulty. Why wait until next April? The charges are obviously too high. They are lower elsewhere, and they could be lower here, too. My third proposition is that we already have plenty of evidence about how to fix the high charge problem. I have heard it said that, in fact, self-regulation by payday loan lenders is the best way forward. Quite apart from the fact that it is difficult to see this bringing down costs, the evidence at the moment is that self-regulation is not working. Earlier this month, BIS published a large-scale and comprehensive review of how well the payday loan industry had been complying with its revised July 2012 customer charter and codes of practice. What BIS found was this: “Overall, the results of the survey show that 9 months after the industry said they would comply fully with the charter and the improved codes of practice, self-regulation is not working effectively and compliance with key provisions is not good enough … lenders appear to fall down significantly in meeting the requirements … overall in relation to rollovers, Continuous Payment Authority (CPA) and the treatment of customers in financial difficulty”.
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Lord EatwellMy Lords, I am delighted that the Liberal Democrats are coming behind the proposals developed by my noble friend Lord M…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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My Lords, I am delighted that the Liberal Democrats are coming behind the proposals developed by my noble friend Lord Mitchell. I hope they acknowledge his success in having the various clauses limiting payday loans and high-cost credit agreements inserted during the passage of the Financial Services Act 2012. Given that that Act is now in place and the measures advanced by my noble friend Lord Mitchell are on the statute book, the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, as I understand it, is about why nothing is happening and why there is a lack of movement towards getting appropriate regulation in place. If he is indeed correct that things are moving so slowly—I have no reason to believe that he is not—the Government owe him an explanation as to why that is the case. Obviously, one is sympathetic to getting my noble friend Lord Mitchell’s measures going as fast as possible, but I have a couple of questions about the amendment. First, do we really feel that there is a simple read-over between state government in the United States and a local authority in the UK? It seems that we pile responsibilities on local authorities without giving them sufficient funding, in many cases, to fulfil their responsibilities. I do not see that the amendment provides for any resources to go to local authorities to enable them to do the job. Secondly, as far as I understand it, quite a lot of payday lending is done online. The amendment will do absolutely nothing to address loans that are made online because it is all geographically defined. A payday lender may have a registered address but that may have absolutely nothing to do with the location of the customers of that payday lender. The disjuncture between the registered address and the location of the customers suggests that knowledge of local needs would not necessarily be very relevant in such a case. I am very sympathetic to the need to get things moving and look forward to the Government telling noble Lords how energetic they are being and giving us some concrete evidence of how my noble friend Lord Mitchell’s measures are being effectively brought into being. I would also like the Government to consider whether the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has, with the notion of the local authority—or indeed any other authority—identified a means of getting things moving more quickly.
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, the Government wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend that consumers must be protected when they borrow fr…
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Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, the Government wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend that consumers must be protected when they borrow from payday lenders and use other high-cost forms of credit. As noble Lords have pointed out, the Government fundamentally reformed the regulatory system governing these lenders to protect borrowers by transferring the regulation of consumer credit to the Financial Conduct Authority in the Financial Services Act 2012. The FCA takes up this new regulatory responsibility on 1 April but has already demonstrated that it is serious about cracking down on high-cost lenders. It is absolutely unfair on it to say that nothing has happened since the Act was passed last year. On 3 October, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has pointed out, the FCA set out an action plan on high-cost lending to protect consumers, with tough new rules covering a number of issues, including a limit on rollovers and restricting the use of continuous payment authorities. These proposals have won widespread support and will profoundly change how this industry operates. I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, that self-regulation has failed, but the industry is not going to be self-regulated any more. Turning now to the noble Lord’s amendment specifically, I am surprised that he thinks that local authorities should be given additional responsibility for regulating high-cost lenders. I can see why it might work in the States, and having looked at the Florida scheme I completely agree that it has been an extremely successful scheme there. I hope that there are a number of additional elements of that scheme that might, in time, be introduced into the UK. However, I frankly cannot see the case for duplicating regulatory effort within such a small geographic area of the UK, especially as consumers will find this confusing. Nor can this be considered a good use of public funds, given that the FCA, which is fully funded by the industry, already has this responsibility. Most payday lenders have a national reach, especially the biggest players which dominate the market and, by definition, those which are online, so it does not make sense to permit scores of local authorities, in addition to the FCA, to all regulate the same lender. We believe that a well-resourced and empowered single national regulator will provide the best outcome for consumers. Consumers will be better protected by having a regulator with the resources, expertise and national consistency of the FCA. I am not convinced of the benefits for consumers of a federal approach to regulation. In fact, this could lead to more consumer harm; payday lenders are more likely to target consumers in local authority areas where the authority is less active. The nub of the amendment is, of course, that the noble Lord has framed it to ensure that the Secretary of State imposes a cap on the cost of high-cost credit. While I entirely support the noble Lord’s ambition to bring down the cost of such loans, I am not convinced that the best way to do that is via a mandatory cap. The Government do not believe that current evidence provides sufficient justification to support a cap on the cost of credit. The noble Lord has referred to the work commissioned by the Government from the University of Bristol. It does not, as he says, say that the main arguments against a cap on the rate relate to loan sharks. It does point out that although that may happen in some cases, lenders may try to bypass the cap by introducing other charges or fees which are not subject to it. Evidence shows that, with a cap in place, lenders may be less likely to show understanding if customers get into repayment difficulties. While the Government are not convinced that a mandatory cap is the best overall solution for consumers now, they have made it clear that the FCA has a specific power to impose a cap in future, should it decide that it is needed to protect consumers. The FCA has already committed to start analysis on use of this power from April 2014. Capping the cost of credit is a major intervention with potentially profound consequences for consumers, so it is right that the FCA contemplates use of this power in a responsible and evidence-based way, which is what it will now do. Noble Lords should not be in any doubt about the FCA’s commitment to using its powers to protect consumers whenever it feels it is necessary. The Government stand ready to support the FCA to ensure the best overall outcome for consumers. I know it is extremely frustrating that we have not got a comprehensive solution in place, but the Government have moved with considerable alacrity in setting up a new, effective regulatory framework. The regulator has acted quickly to set out proposals and on that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
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Lord SharkeyI am happy to acknowledge the achievements of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell. As the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, may know,…
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Lord SharkeyLiberal Democrat
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I am happy to acknowledge the achievements of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell. As the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, may know, when I spoke to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, about my amendment, he said that, if he could, he would be happy to speak in support—qualified support, no doubt. The question of local authorities is a red herring. I would happily trade off local authorities for the FCA if the Government would agree to the substance of the amendment. I do not intend to pursue the notion or the comments that have been made about local authorities by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, and my noble friend the Minister. I am puzzled by the notion of there not being sufficient evidence to introduce a cap. I am hard put to understand how the situation in the United States—we mentioned only Florida but there are 17 other states with low interest rate caps; these systems work well—does not constitute something close to entirely sufficient evidence. I note in passing that Australia introduced the same system last year and there is evidence available from there as well. I also note in passing that this issue about payday lenders being able to avoid any cap by writing in additional charges is explicitly dealt with in the regulations that exist in Florida and the other states that cap these things. It is the total cost of any charges connected in any way with the loan that is capped; it is not just the interest rate. I listened carefully to what my noble friend the Minister said and I will read it carefully again tomorrow morning. If we can dismiss the notion of local authorities for the moment, there may be merit in returning to this issue and of getting something done more quickly than April and afterwards so that we do not continue to have people taking on these loans at appalling costs. There may be merit in returning to that on Report but in the mean time I beg leave to withdraw.
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Lord McFall of AlcluithMy Lords, while many aspects of competition, culture and behaviour in the industry are addressed by the Financial Servi…
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Lord McFall of AlcluithCrossbench
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My Lords, while many aspects of competition, culture and behaviour in the industry are addressed by the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill, these amendments focus on the lack of transparency and public disclosure of poor products, practices, individuals and institutions, which remains unaddressed. The focus of these amendments is to open up this aspect of transparency. The amendments would enable the FCA to publish the instructions it gives to firms when it finds that consumers have been unfairly treated. It would improve the accountability of the regulator and of the regulated firms. Most people are agreed that the FSA was not a transparent regulator. Indeed, in 2009, when the Treasury Select Committee investigated the treatment of customers in mortgage arrears, it concluded that, “the balance between disclosure to the public and the need to protect firms before they have been found guilty of wrongdoing may have tilted too far towards the interests of the industry”. More importantly, Section 348 of FiSMA placed a blanket prohibition on the FSA publishing information received from firms without the firms’ permission. The question has to be asked: are any banks going to voluntarily agree to the publication of their poor practice? I would suggest that is highly unlikely. I will give one example. In the case of PPI, HFC Bank was fined by the FSA in 2007 for mis-selling of PPI. It issued instructions about the steps the bank needed to take to contact customers and review its previous conduct. However, when consumer groups asked for full details of the instructions, the answer given was that the instructions issued by the FSA contained information from HFC and the FSA was therefore prohibited from disclosing them by Section 348 of FiSMA. This amendment empowers the FCA to release the instructions given to firms. Genuinely confidential information still will be protected, but the regulator will no longer be able to use Section 348 as an excuse for not disclosing the instructions it gives to firms. There are safeguards for firms, requiring the regulator to consult firms on the notice it will issue and to take account of their representations. Indeed, when the managing director of supervision at that time, Jon Pain of the FSA, appeared before the Commons Treasury Committee in March 2010, he was asked if he would like to have the ability to publish names of firms to which the FSA has sent a warning notice on disciplinary process. He said that that process struck the right balance between transparency and process. The FSA itself would like that facility to be looked at. Indeed, when the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards looked into it, we stated that: “Amendment of Section 348 … is likely to be required to facilitate the publication of appropriate information about the quality of service and price transparency.” The amendment argues that the definition of “confidential information” should be modified to exclude firm-specific results of mystery-shopping exercises and thematic work. That would prevent consumers being kept in the dark and ensure that firms are not able to get away with not treating their customers fairly without suffering any practical penalty. The definition should also be modified to exclude price data for certain markets, such as annuities—a very hot topic at the moment—which would make it easier for consumers to shop around to get the best rate and spot when they are getting a bad deal. It would also assist consumer organisations in warning consumers about products to avoid. Complaints data for individual firms should also be excluded, which would allow the FCA to react swiftly to emerging problems by disclosing specific information about individual product areas to consumers. The legacy of mis-selling which exists happened because of a lack of speed in telling consumers and ensuring that individual companies undertook the remedies which the then FSA asked them to undertake. If the definition also excluded enforcement activity against firms, that would allow for greater regulatory transparency. That must include the FCA publishing information on the number of cases referred to enforcement, broken down by subject—including product and practice involved—and industry sector; the outcome of cases, including how many resulted in a fine, public censure or were dealt with informally; and the names of firms and individuals involved in cases. As I said on an earlier amendment, the balance is tilted too much towards the industry. The asymmetry of knowledge is in the industry’s favour. This amendment would help redress that by improving transparency. I ask the Minister to consider the long-standing commitment that I have had to that.
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Lord EatwellMy Lords, my noble friend has made a very strong case. He needed to add one other element to persuade the Government, w…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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My Lords, my noble friend has made a very strong case. He needed to add one other element to persuade the Government, which is that this would enhance competition. If one improved information in this way, then, given the enhancement of consumer choice, the competitive objective of the Government would be better served. This would be a diminution of some of the severe problems of asymmetric information that distort competition in financial services, especially retail financial services. If it was developed with care it would be a considerable boost to the overall efficiency of retail financial services in this country. It is very easy to say, “The time is not ripe; it is not really quite the time; there are unintended consequences”. All that is required is a consistent bias towards transparency. The Government should approach this issue by saying, “In principle, we are in favour of transparency”. The argument should be made for not being transparent. In other words, the strong case has to be made for not revealing something. The fundamental prejudice should be that this information should be transparent. Effective transmission of information is a key element in creating an efficient market and enhancing the competitive goal that the Government claim to be their own.
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord McFall, pointed out, we debated this issue at great length during proceedings on the…
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Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord McFall, pointed out, we debated this issue at great length during proceedings on the previous Financial Services Bill. Sections 348 and 349 of FiSMA govern the treatment of confidential information obtained by the regulators and the ability of the regulators to disclose such confidential information. The noble Lord argued at the time, and repeated today, that there was inadequate transparency and insufficient disclosure of information in the financial services regulatory regime. This led to the argument that Section 348 should be amended to make it as unrestricted as possible. In response, the Treasury undertook a careful review of Section 348 and its associated provisions. The review concluded, first, that it would be difficult to amend Section 348 without negative consequences. Scaling back Section 348 would increase the risk that firms would become less willing to share information with the regulators, undermining those important relationships and the regulators’ ability to protect consumers. Secondly, even with Section 348 in place, the FCA could and should do more to increase transparency. With that in mind, the Government decided at the time not to amend or delete Section 348 but agreed with the FSA, as it then was, for it to carry out a fundamental review of how transparency would be embedded in the new FCA regime. This was published as a consultation in April of this year and received positive feedback from consumer groups—that is, the very people the new or changed approach was intended to benefit. The review covered use of disclosure as a regulatory tool by the regulator, disclosure of information by firms, both voluntarily and as a result of FCA rules, and transparency on the part of the regulator. In terms of publishing details of enforcement action, the FCA is already required to publish details and information about decisions and final notices that it considers appropriate. It can also publish the fact that a warning notice has been issued in respect of disciplinary action. In response to the recent PCBS recommendation that it should require firms to publish more information, the FCA has outlined its plans to issue a call for evidence next year on data that it should require firms to publish to help consumers better understand the firm and product quality. I hope the noble Lord will agree that this is exactly what the PCBS was seeking to achieve and that it can be done without further amendment to Section 348.
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Lord McFall of AlcluithMy Lords, again the Government’s response is a little timid. However, the hour is late. It is an appropriate time to sa…
Speaker
Lord McFall of AlcluithCrossbench
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My Lords, again the Government’s response is a little timid. However, the hour is late. It is an appropriate time to say, “Mañana” and we will fight it another day.
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22:54
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Lord TurnbullMy Lords, this is an amendment to which we have returned on a number of occasions and which is quite fundamental to the…
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Lord TurnbullCrossbench
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My Lords, this is an amendment to which we have returned on a number of occasions and which is quite fundamental to the Bill. It raises the question of what is a bank and defines who comes within the scope of the various regimes, sanctions, penalties, or whatever. There was a feeling when we last discussed this that defining a bank around whether it took deposits was too narrow and that there could be people who could conduct, for example, trading activities without taking deposits and who ought to be subject to the senior managers’ regime, the criminal sanction or the remuneration regime. The amendment is an attempt to widen that scope. It was tabled before the letter dated 22 October from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, to the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, with its offer to set out a note. I think that that will probably deal with the question. I do not think that there is any real difference between us about what we want to cover. We want to make sure that we are covering not only ring-fenced banks but people running major investment bank trading operations, whether they be domestic, such as BarCap, or UBS or whatever.
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22:58
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Lord EatwellPerhaps I can be of help to the noble Lord. I do not know whether he has had the opportunity to see the Bank of England…
Speaker
Lord EatwellLabour
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Perhaps I can be of help to the noble Lord. I do not know whether he has had the opportunity to see the Bank of England response to the final report published today, where the Bank of England provides the answer which the noble Lord, Lord Newby, was unable to provide. It says: “For the present, the Government’s legislative proposals in this area will apply only to deposit takers”—
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22:59
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Earl Attlee (Con)My Lords, we are slightly out of order because the noble Lord has not moved his amendment and started the debate. Perha…
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Earl Attlee (Con)Conservative
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My Lords, we are slightly out of order because the noble Lord has not moved his amendment and started the debate. Perhaps the noble Lord would like to finish moving his amendment.
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23:00
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Lord TurnbullI thought that I had started by begging to move Amendment 104E, but if I have not I shall do so now, and if that allows…
Speaker
Lord TurnbullCrossbench
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I thought that I had started by begging to move Amendment 104E, but if I have not I shall do so now, and if that allows the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, to offer his clarification I should be very grateful. I beg to move.
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Lord EatwellI usually try to be difficult. When I try to be helpful I am stopped. I was referring to the Bank of England response,…
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Lord EatwellLabour
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I usually try to be difficult. When I try to be helpful I am stopped. I was referring to the Bank of England response, published today, in which it says that, “the Government’s legislative proposals in this area”— this is referring to the senior persons regime which we talked about last time— “will apply only to deposit takers but not to investment banks and insurance companies”. So the Bank of England is clear that both the senior persons regime and, I presume, also the offences issue—for which I remember the same issue arose as to the definition of a bank—do not apply to investment banks.
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23:01
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Lord TurnbullMy response to that is that it is completely unsatisfactory. We shall need to come back to it. I hope that there can be…
Speaker
Lord TurnbullCrossbench
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My response to that is that it is completely unsatisfactory. We shall need to come back to it. I hope that there can be some discussion, maybe with officials in the Bill team. I am not satisfied that applying these various provisions simply to deposit takers covers all the areas of conduct that really need to be covered. One other issue came to light in the course of this evening’s discussions about the remuneration regime. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, read out a list of people who are covered. Those are the people who are covered by the current remuneration regime. What was being proposed in my amendment was in effect a senior tier particularly for banking. Once you do that, you have to find a definition of a bank. I thought that we were a bit nearer to getting an answer until I heard from the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. It is something we need to sort out, otherwise we shall find a serious area of misconduct in an investment banking area only to be told that when we legislated we forgot to cover these kinds of people. That would be completely unacceptable.
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23:04
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, I thought that I read out virtually verbatim last week what the noble Lord has read out from the Bank of Engl…
Speaker
Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, I thought that I read out virtually verbatim last week what the noble Lord has read out from the Bank of England. We are going to confirm that in a letter. However the most important point is the one that the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, raised about the scope of the senior managers regime and the criminal offence that goes with it. I can confirm now what I attempted to say last time, that my Treasury colleagues are considering the scope of the new regime and of the new criminal offence of reckless misconduct in the management of a bank in the light of the previous debate. I can assure the House that they take your Lordships’ views extremely seriously.
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23:03
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Lord TurnbullI infer that I should pay more attention to the letter of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, of 22 October than I should pay t…
Speaker
Lord TurnbullCrossbench
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I infer that I should pay more attention to the letter of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, of 22 October than I should pay to the Bank of England’s response, because I think the former is a more constructive response than that of the Bank of England. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 104E.
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23:03
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Lord NewbyThese amendments address a minor and technical point in connection with Sections 380, 382, and 384 of FiSMA, which gove…
Speaker
Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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These amendments address a minor and technical point in connection with Sections 380, 382, and 384 of FiSMA, which govern when the regulators may seek an injunction or a restitution order from the court, or require restitution themselves. To exercise these powers, the regulator must demonstrate that the person concerned has contravened a “relevant requirement”. The current definition of “relevant requirement” in FiSMA does not include the new offences created under Part 7 of the Financial Services Act 2012, which deal with misleading statements, misleading impressions, and misleading statements in relation to benchmarks such as LIBOR. This means that regulators are unable to seek an injunction or restitution in relation to these offences. That was not the Government’s intention. These amendments correct this oversight by extending the definition of “relevant requirement” to bring these offences within the scope of the regulators’ powers to seek an injunction or restitution. I commend these amendments to the House.
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, these are technical amendments relating to a number of the new powers introduced to the Bill as a result of t…
Speaker
Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, these are technical amendments relating to a number of the new powers introduced to the Bill as a result of the Government’s amendments in your Lordships’ House. Amendment 113A amends Clause 17 of the Bill to specify the procedures applying to statutory instruments made under the new powers. It provides that the affirmative resolution procedure will apply to: orders made by the Treasury to exclude certain systems from the definition of “payment systems” for the purposes of the new clauses establishing the new payments regulator; orders to make amendments, which are consequential to the Bill, to other primary legislation, under the power introduced by the second amendment in this group, to which I will return in a minute; and orders made under paragraph 6 of the schedule on the conduct of financial market infrastructure administration, which allows the Treasury to make further modifications to primary legislation to make appropriate provision for FMI administration. Orders made under other provisions of the Bill will be subject to the negative resolution procedure, unless they are required to be made using the affirmative procedure, or they are commencement orders. Amendment 114 enables the Treasury to make amendments consequential to the Bill—and any statutory instruments made under it—to other primary and secondary legislation. For example, it is likely that this power will be used to bring other legislation in line with the terminology of the new senior managers regime. This power can be used only in certain circumstances and the Treasury can make orders under the power only if it considers it necessary or expedient to do so as a consequence of a provision in the Bill. Furthermore, the power applies only to legislation which is made before the Bill is passed, or which is made in the same Parliamentary Session in which the Bill is passed. I beg to move.
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23:08
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Lord EatwellMy Lords, first, with respect to Amendment 113A, it is useful to see the use of the affirmative procedure here. However…
Speaker
Lord EatwellLabour
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My Lords, first, with respect to Amendment 113A, it is useful to see the use of the affirmative procedure here. However, the noble Lord will recall that the Delegated Powers Committee recommended an amendment which referred to the amendment of clauses that deal with ring-fencing. I asked more than two weeks ago how the Treasury would react to the Delegated Powers Committee in this respect and was told that I would receive a reply. I have not, as yet, received a reply. As we are now reaching the end of the Committee stage, it would be very helpful to know whether the Government are simply ignoring the Delegated Powers Committee, in which case we would require an explanation, or what the Government intend to do about this. On Amendment 114, these powers are sometimes referred to as Henry VIII powers. Given this new clause, the good King Henry would regard it as rather excessive and would be taken aback by the power that the Treasury takes, “amending, repealing, revoking or applying with modifications any enactment to which this section applies”. The enactment applies to, “any enactment passed or made before the passing of this Act”, so, presumably, since the birth of Henry VIII. The new clause then refers to, “any enactment passed or made on or before the last day”. That I understand. What scrutiny will be given to these measures? We have been through a Committee stage which has identified a consistent rejection of proposals by the banking commission and particularly of the amendments that have been put forward. I have not heard the Government accept a single amendment put forward on behalf of the banking commission—not one—so there has been a consistent rejection of those. Now we are told that we will have the possibility of, “amending, repealing, revoking or applying with modifications”, a series of quite controversial measures in which the Government have attempted to water down the proposals of the banking commission. I would like to feel that I could get some reassurance that this power is to be used sparingly and is to be used only if there is some oversight or accountability to Parliament when it is used.
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23:09
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Lord BrennanMy Lords, it is the end of the legislative day in an empty Chamber. This is an extremely important amendment. It is wha…
Speaker
Lord BrennanNon-affiliated
Quote
My Lords, it is the end of the legislative day in an empty Chamber. This is an extremely important amendment. It is what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, our previous Lord Chief Justice, now on our Cross Benches, would have described, as he did in a speech in the City, as a “Henry VIII Plus” clause because it is so wide-ranging. I want to make several points for the Government’s consideration between now and the next stage. The Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008 and the Public Service Pensions Act 2013 were both Acts that included clauses not as wide as this coming from the Treasury. Researches over the past few hours have not led me to discover any other Act in which there is a clause that provides for any previous Act and also any subsequent Act to be amended to accord with this Act. I may be shown not to know, but I suspect that if there is such a clause, there will be no more than one or two examples. I am concerned that these should come from the Treasury, lest it thinks that it has some special reserve powers for this kind of legislative amendment procedure. If I have understood the history of this amendment correctly, it has come in the past couple of weeks. As far as I know, it has not been considered either by the Delegated Powers Committee or by the Constitutional Affairs Committee. This is important because in 2006 the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill contained a Henry VIII clause, which was withdrawn by the then Government after a critique by the Constitutional Affairs Committee. I invite the Government’s consideration of this and that of the whole House, when it has had the opportunity to consider that matter. Subsection (2)(b) refers to a power to amend any subsequent Act that is passed within this Session of Parliament. That means by the end of next April. In the Government’s commentary on the list of recommendations of the commission and the Government’s response paper of July 2013, item 41, dealing with directors’ duties, is the present subject of review with a supposed consideration of a report called Trust and Transparency. The Government are saying that they wish to deal with changing directors’ duties and that that requires legislation. If this is currently before the Treasury and the relevant Ministers, is this coming in within this Session? In item 60 on payments regulation, there is to be a government report to Parliament by the end of this year, 2013. It requires legislation. Will that require yet another Act? We need clarity. On the whistleblower point mentioned earlier, if there is to be a change in the law, will that require further enactment? The final point is on auditors and supervisors. There are various reviews from the Chancellor and the Government which, it is said, do not involve legislation but might involve action, which in turn might involve potential legislative effect. That is three definite items and potentially a fourth that spring out of this topic, and we need clarity. If this is a banking reform Bill, it should be a complete Bill, and the rest of the Session should be geared to accommodate these matters. It is late in the day to ask for a considered response, but no doubt this can be dealt with in writing, and again when we next deal with the Bill.
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23:11
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Lord TurnbullBecause of the piecemeal way in which the Bill has been constructed, we now have a piecemeal presentation of the second…
Speaker
Lord TurnbullCrossbench
Quote
Because of the piecemeal way in which the Bill has been constructed, we now have a piecemeal presentation of the secondary legislation procedure as it applies to each bit—and I have completely lost track of it. The first thing that needs to be done is to set out, for the whole Bill—the bits that were there originally and the bits that have been added—what the secondary legislation provisions are. Then we can make a judgment on whether they are appropriate: whether the right things have been assigned to the negative procedure and the right things assigned to the positive procedure. However, it is virtually impossible to do this on the basis of this piecemeal presentation. Amendment 114 raises enormous issues. The Minister is shaking his head and may try to reassure us, but there are important provisions here that need to go to various committees which we have set up in this House to examine such things.
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23:16
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, three issues have been raised. The first is whether we have responded to the Delegated Powers Committee. I ex…
Speaker
Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, three issues have been raised. The first is whether we have responded to the Delegated Powers Committee. I explained at some length last week what the Government’s response was. Subsequently, I wrote to the chair of the committee, reiterating what I had said. I am sorry if noble Lords have not seen the letter; I will make sure that it gets to them. I will repeat what I said and what the letter said. The Government’s view, bearing in mind that the committee said it was for the House to decide and did not make a recommendation on the procedure to be followed, is that, given the technical nature of these statutory instruments, the best way forward, in the light of the Government’s response to the consultation process that they have just completed, is to invite noble Lords who are interested in the secondary legislation to the Treasury to have an informal discussion on the issues, and to see what they feel might be done, and whether any amendments are required. The Treasury does not have a fixed view on the detailed provision of that secondary legislation, and would welcome the further views of Members of your Lordships’ House. Secondly, I find literally incredible the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, that the Government took no account of the recommendations of the PCBS.
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23:18
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Lord EatwellWhich amendment proposed by the PCBS have the Government accepted?
Speaker
Lord EatwellLabour
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Which amendment proposed by the PCBS have the Government accepted?
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23:18
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Lord NewbyThe noble Lord may or may not remember that at the start of today’s discussions the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, pointed ou…
Speaker
Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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The noble Lord may or may not remember that at the start of today’s discussions the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, pointed out that the size of the Bill had expanded multiple times. I admit that part of this relates to the Government’s amendments on bail-in. However, every other amendment is in order to implement a recommendation of the PCBS. That is what we spent nearly all of last week discussing.
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23:18
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Lord McFall of AlcluithThere is a real communication problem here. I was at a meeting with the noble Lords, Lord Turnbull and Lord Lawson, and…
Speaker
Lord McFall of AlcluithCrossbench
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There is a real communication problem here. I was at a meeting with the noble Lords, Lord Turnbull and Lord Lawson, and with Andrew Tyrie, and they all complained about the expansion of the Bill from 35 pages to 199. If the Minister, incredibly, is saying that this is to help the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, perhaps the Government should start communicating with us on this, because we are dismayed by the number of pages in the Bill, not accepting of it.
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23:19
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, I am sorry; with the exception of the bail-in provisions, the expansion of the size of the Bill is specifical…
Speaker
Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, I am sorry; with the exception of the bail-in provisions, the expansion of the size of the Bill is specifically in order to implement recommendations of the parliamentary commission, such as the senior managers regime, the criminal sanctions and the enhanced electrification power. The reason that the Government have not today accepted everything that the PCBS has recommended is that we have already accepted the majority of the commission’s recommendations and put them in the Bill. It is simply not the case that we have accepted no recommendations of the parliamentary commission—quite the opposite. The final issue is specifically about the powers in this amendment. The powers can only be used to make consequential amendments—that is, those which are needed to deal with the provisions passed in the Bill. The example I gave was in relation to the senior persons regime, and I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, that there is nothing sinister or unusual in what is being proposed. These powers are commonly taken in Bills which make significant changes to existing law. I am very happy for Treasury lawyers to set out in a letter the precedents that these powers exactly replicate. The hour is late, but I can assure the House that we are not doing anything here that is in the slightest way unusual.
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23:20
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Lord EatwellWill the noble Lord agree that Amendment 114, at least, should be withdrawn until it can be considered by the Constitut…
Speaker
Lord EatwellLabour
Quote
Will the noble Lord agree that Amendment 114, at least, should be withdrawn until it can be considered by the Constitution Committee and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee? He has plenty of time to bring it back on Report if he then has substantial justification for it, and it would give considerable comfort to the Committee.
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23:20
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, I do not think that we need to withdraw the amendment. As I say, it is a standard provision. Interestingly, t…
Speaker
Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, I do not think that we need to withdraw the amendment. As I say, it is a standard provision. Interestingly, the specific reason that I gave for requiring it relates to the implementation of a recommendation of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. However, as I say, this provision is not in any way unusual. Therefore, I do not believe it needs the process that the noble Lord suggests.
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23:21
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Lord NewbyMy Lords, this amendment is consequential upon government Amendments 60A to 60YYV introducing a Payments Systems Regula…
Speaker
Lord NewbyLiberal Democrat
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My Lords, this amendment is consequential upon government Amendments 60A to 60YYV introducing a Payments Systems Regulator, and government Amendments 61 to 78, 107 and 108 which introduced a special administration regime for the operators of financial market infrastructure companies. It amends the Long Title of this Bill to reflect the fact that its scope now extends to payment systems and securities settlement systems and therefore ensures that the Long Title matches the content of the Bill. I commend this amendment to your Lordships.
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23:21
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EnactedFinancial Services (Banking Reform) Act