Financial Services Bill
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Eatwell
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, I shall address Amendment 54, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayter. I will also speak to Amendments 55, 57, 58 and 61. I apologise to the Committee if there is some confusion over the grouping with respect to these amendments. We asked this morning for this amendment to be degrouped from the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Flight, which deals with something rather different.
I will preface my remarks by saying that over the next several groups we will examine the exceptionalism of the Financial Policy Committee. This committee is an experiment, and it has powers transferred from persons who have the authority of election behind them and are part of the executive, to an administrative function. These powers are substantial: they manage the supply of credit, and possibly, if particular measures were handed over to the FPC, they will manage the demand for credit. Hence, it will have a major impact on the overall macroperformance of the economy.
There is also the potential for the FPC to be in conflict with the Monetary Policy Committee—the MPC—which controls the price of credit. That contradiction could be a serious element in the overall operation and management of the economy. The exceptionalism of the FPC, in our view, requires exceptional scrutiny and consultation as this experiment unfolds. I call it an experiment because we do not as yet know how effective these administrative measures are going to be. We do not as yet know even what they will be in content, so a degree of extra scrutiny and consultation is required at every stage to ensure that major mistakes are not made and that we design effective procedures and secure public acceptance for the role of the Financial Policy Committee.
Amendment 54 introduces a minor element, which has wider significance than might at first appear. It simply introduces the expression “and the public” into those who must be consulted with respect to the makings of an order. The public here is a term of art, meaning those who have a direct interest in this area. It would essentially involve the industry and perhaps a few specialist academics or others who have a particular interest in the field. Amendment 54 seeks, as does Amendment 55, to introduce the possibility of that wider consultation, which I believe is vital if this experiment—and it is an experiment—is to succeed.
Amendment 57 simply adds to the requirements for consultation by providing a back-up. When there is some failure to consult, perhaps because of the urgency of a particular measure, that failure should be,
“subject to scrutiny by the Treasury Select Committee”,
in a way which has been recognised in other parts of the Bill. Amendment 61 adds to the conditions associated with urgency that there should be a statement published within 10 days of an urgent measure on which consultation has not taken place. Those four amendments provide a wider framework of consultation for this experiment than is provided in the Bill. It seems to me that they are entirely unexceptional and would be widely welcomed throughout the financial services industry, and indeed the policy community.
Amendment 58 is a little different and really should have been degrouped, but we feel we should not go too far in our enthusiasm for degrouping. Here we have a slightly different element that focuses, however, on the exceptionalism of the Financial Policy Committee because that committee has a particular responsibility for measures that are specific macroeconomic controls. I simply do not see how that responsibility can be in any way transferred to the FCA or the PRA, which do not have such a responsibility in their objectives or their specification of roles. This seems to be a major mistake in the drafting of the Bill. It is also unnecessary with respect to the directions by the FPC, since the ability of the FPC to authorise the exercise of discretion is covered in proposed new Section 9G(5). This part is therefore going too far, as the necessary role for the FPC is already covered.
This is a dangerous amendment—no, it is a dangerous position, not a dangerous amendment. It is a very beneficial amendment, which would remove a potential danger in the sense that the provision, as drafted, takes these experimental powers which we are handing to the FPC and allows them to be generalised outwith that very special framework that we are creating in the Bill. I urge the Government to accept Amendment 58. All the powers that the committee needs are covered by proposed new Section 9G(5) and this position is entirely unnecessary.
In dealing with the exceptionalism of the Financial Policy Committee, therefore, the amendments I am discussing in this group enhance the underpinning of consultation that will provide validity and acceptance to the powers of the FPC and remove what was perhaps an unwitting extension of those powers, which might undermine the entire project. I beg to move.
Lord Barnett
Apart from the slight slip, I agree with everything my noble friend said. Indeed, I would say that it is not the only major mistake in this Bill. There are lots of major mistakes; indeed, there is total confusion. My noble friend has referred to only part of it. The plain fact is that when he talked about the FCA or the FPC, I was not quite sure which one we were talking about. There is also the PRA, which I forgot to mention. The macroprudential is also very important. I do not know where it fits into all this and where the responsibility will lie. To say that it is confusing is to put it mildly. As I have said before, this Bill is a dog’s breakfast—I think that is the phrase. This Joint Committee that is being set up—perhaps the noble Lord can tell us when—was supposed to deal with everything very quickly. However, we are rising in a couple of weeks’ time, and if the Joint Committee is not set up soon it will be October before it is. Perhaps the noble Lord knows, because he knows everything about this Bill.
The plain fact is that responsibility ultimately rests with the Treasury. On the previous group of amendments, we were told that the Treasury will issue another document. The one thing we are not short of on this Bill is documents. We have two huge volumes, one with the schedules and one with the clauses, plus Treasury amendments and all kinds of working papers. Frankly, if my noble friend is confused, anyone involved with this Bill is bound to be confused because it is totally confusing. I hope that the Minister will be able to reply comprehensively about how the whole thing will work and where the responsibility lies. I assume that ultimately it will lie with the Treasury, not with the FCA or the PRA or whoever. Who else will be responsible for financial stability? It must be the Treasury. No doubt, the Minister will be able to tell us. I strongly support my noble friend.
Lord Peston
My Lords, first, I support my noble friend Lord Barnett in his remarks about this Joint Committee of both Houses, about which we had a great row last week and were even divided on. We would certainly like to know when it will be set up and when it will appear in detail in the business statement. Having said that, I have two or three questions.
My noble friend is quite right to use the word “experiment”, but I hope he will agree that the whole Bill is an experiment. We have not had anything like this placed before us in this form, certainly in my quarter of a century here. That does not mean that it is an experiment that should not take place, but it does mean that we must be immensely careful when it comes to implementation. In particular, the one thing that we do not want to do is what I am afraid all Governments do: look at the past and then repeat the errors of the past willy-nilly. This is not a party political point; it is part of the nature of our political system. We need to make absolutely certain that we do not repeat the errors of the past.
One slight point which my noble friend knows I will disagree on is the phrase,
“subject to scrutiny by the Treasury Select Committee”.
I would always want to add “and the Economic Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House”, but again we have had that argument before, and the cliché “flogging dead horses” is not my stock in trade.
What troubles me much more is that I cannot see how what is said in the Bill does not lead to clashes with the MPC and what it seeks to do. There is an enormous blurred area of who is responsible for what. After all, if one knows any monetary economics, one knows that the MPC’s role is certainly to produce financial stability. That is the whole point of a correct monetary framework, yet there are these other bodies doing the same thing. I know that we went through this again last week and were told that the governor of the Bank—I add the now mandatory remark, “whoever he or she may be”—will be chairing both committees, but it is still a Herculean task for the governor to ensure that two different committees do not have a decision-making process that leads to conflict.
My last question is due to my ignorance of parliamentary procedure. Could the Minister say a bit more about what the phrase “by order” means? Does it mean putting an order before both Houses that is not amendable by us, or not? Apart from that, as I say, my support is strong.
Baroness Noakes
I may be able to help the noble Lord, Lord Peston, with his last question. In two groups’ time, we will be discussing precisely the nature of the procedure that will accompany these new tools. The noble Lord might like to wait until then.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
I am always grateful to my noble friend or anyone else who wants to take the heat on challenging questions. We will come back to the nature of orders.
On the question of what the experiment is here, the experiment that has failed is that of creating the FSA, and we now need to go back to putting the Bank of England at the heart of matters, which is what this is all about. I rather preferred the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, referring to a “project”, which he did at the end of his speech, rather than an “experiment”. It is indeed a major project.
To dispose of the not entirely relevant question about the Joint Committee on banking ethics and standards, the procedural Motion to set up that committee will be before us very shortly. There is not much more that I can usefully add. I do not think it is directly relevant to these amendments, but I am sure that that Motion will come forward very soon.
Lord Peston
It is directly relevant because the Minister has argued constantly that these are times of crisis and that we need to act quickly. He keeps arguing that and blaming the previous Government for the crisis rather than his own Government’s continued mistakes. It is therefore very relevant for us to know when this committee is going to be set up and who will be on it.
Lord Sassoon
I am sure that we will not have to wait for very long. I shall address what is more directly the subject of these amendments and the question about possible conflicts between the FPC and the MPC. While it is conceivable that the two committees might seemingly appear to be taking conflicting action, I do not actually believe that that is likely to be the case as each committee’s actions will be designed to address very different aspects of the economy and the financial system. That said, there are mechanisms in place to ensure that conflict does not arise. The committees will share information and briefing in order to aid co-ordination, and the Bill makes provision for joint meetings of the two policy committees if at any time that is required. The Bank has also said that it agrees with the Treasury Committee’s recommendation on this question and that the governor should consult the chairman of court if a conflict arises. It is unlikely, but the Bill makes provision through joint meetings and the consultation with the chairman of court.
I turn to the specifics of Amendments 54 and 55. These amendments seek to require the Treasury to consult the public before making any order which makes macroprudential tools available to the FPC. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, that effective consultation on macroprudential tools is essential, but this amendment is not the best way to achieve it. The practice of public consultation on important matters of policy and legislation is now well established and is engrained in good government practice. My honourable friend the Financial Secretary said in another place:
“As a matter of course and as part of the usual statutory instrument process, I expect that the Treasury will consult on macro-prudential tools”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/2/12; col.46.]
The Government have already committed to a consultation on their proposals for the FPC’s initial toolkit and will produce a draft statutory instrument as a part of that consultation. The Bill as currently drafted does not prevent the Treasury from consulting the public. The Government have already shown their willingness to consult on macroprudential tools and demonstrated their commitment to transparency by asking the interim FPC to make public recommendations regarding its tools.
I do not quibble with the term “public”. From what the noble Lord said, I suspect that he might have been expecting me to come back and say that this is not for the public, but for consultation with the industry. I accept the context in which he uses the word “public”. That is not my objection. It is good practice to do it. We are doing it. The FPC has been asked to make public its recommendations regarding tools. However, it may not always be appropriate to consult the public, which is why this requirement should not be in the legislation. Not all macroprudential orders will make large changes to the FPC’s direction powers. It is possible that some orders will contain only minor and technical changes and in this instance a three-month public consultation would be unnecessary. The previous Government rightly recognised the risks of undertaking full public consultation in cases where it is not necessary. Their own code of consultation listed seven criteria, one of which stated:
“Keeping the burden of consultation to a minimum is essential if consultations are to be effective and if consultees’ buy-in to the process is to be obtained”.
The Government have stated that they will, in compliance with the principles of good government, consult the public when material changes to the FPC’s direction powers are proposed and in non-urgent cases. I hope that that provides reassurance which the Committee seeks.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, while we are on this point and before the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, moves on to other elements, I am grateful for his clarification on this issue of consultation. I heard that we expect the Treasury to consult and there is nothing to prevent it consulting. I was seeking that the Treasury be required to consult.
Turning to the point which the noble Lord has just raised about the consultation criteria, which is enormously helpful, would it not be appropriate to write the criteria in to the conditionality with respect to when the Treasury should consult? Then we will not have simply an expectation or a desire and we will not be saying that there is nothing to prevent consultation. We will be saying that the Treasury should consult in all circumstances other than those specified under the consultation criteria. Would that not be helpful?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, of course that could be done, but I make the point again that it is now engrained in the principles of good government that there should normally be three months’ public consultation. There is a code of consultation that the previous Government put out. It sets it all out very clearly, including the point about burdens and so on that I read out. In its full richness, it cannot easily be drafted in legislation. Indeed, if we were going to do it in this Bill, I imagine there could be hundreds of other Bills in which it could be spelled out. I suggest that the Committee should not only take comfort from the standard governmental practice but from the fact that we have already indicated what we are going to do with the FPC toolkit. I believe we have covered it all and do not need to burden this Bill with a lot of detail any more than other Bills are burdened with it.
Amendment 57 seeks to provide that the reasons for making an order without consulting the FPC or the public be subject to scrutiny by the Treasury Select Committee. While I agree that accountability to Parliament will be important and the provisions within the Bill reflect that, I believe, as I have said on other occasions, that it is for parliamentary committees themselves to decide what they will scrutinise. I would expect the Treasury Committee to take a great interest in any circumstances where the Treasury felt it necessary to create a new macroprudential tool on an urgent and therefore possibly not-consulted basis.
I suggest to the Committee that it would be inappropriate for the Government to use primary legislation to force the Treasury Select Committee to scrutinise something. It must be a decision for the committee itself. The committee has already taken great interest in the interim FPC and I hope that this will continue. For those reasons I believe that Amendment 57 is neither appropriate nor necessary.
We then get to Amendment 58—I was going to say “the dangerous amendment”. It seeks to deal with what the noble Lord says is a potentially dangerous situation. He was entirely clear in his reasoning. The amendment seeks to remove the FPC’s ability to confer discretion on the PRA and the FCA as part of a direction.
Lord Sassoon
The noble Lord says that it is the Treasury’s ability to confer discretion. Whoever’s ability to confer discretion it is—I am just turning back to the drafting of the amendment, which really means looking at the clause as well. I will do that as I speak. I believe it is the FPC’s ability to confer discretion, but whether it is the FPC or the Treasury, the purpose of the provision is to allow the direction-making entity to take advantage of the expertise of the PRA and the FCA. Indeed, the noble Lord is completely right. I have now checked the text and it is the Treasury. However, the point is the same. We need to take advantage of the expertise of the PRA and the FCA which hold the expert knowledge relating to the supervision of individual firms. This provision allows the Treasury to take advantage of that expertise in its directions. For example, if the direction required the PRA to require firms with large exposures to hold additional capital, it would be for the PRA to decide which firms had large exposures. That would be something for the supervisor—the regulator—to do. Therefore, I believe that the amendment would unnecessarily hamper the ability of the direction to have proper effect.
Lord Eatwell
Shall we deal with it as I go along? It would be easier for the Committee if we deal with Amendment 58.
There is a mistake here. The text of the Bill says that the Treasury may make an order which,
“may confer a discretion on … the FCA or the PRA”.
In other words, the Treasury has direct macroprudential tool access to the FCA or PRA, not via the FPC. Proposed new Section 9G(5) describes the correct procedure, in that a discretion that could be given to the PRA or the FCA comes via the FPC. In other words, it comes via the macroprudential authority—the institution that is responsible for macroprudential measures. The example given by the noble Lord is particularly pertinent in this case. If there were a requirement to increase the capital that is relative, let us say, to large exposures or to other risk-weighted measures, then that must be a decision of the FPC. I do not see how the Treasury could give that macroprudential role in any shape or form directly to the FCA or the PRA.
If the provision’s wording was that an order may confer a discretion on the Financial Policy Committee, which may then be transferred to the FCA or the PRA at the will of the Financial Policy Committee, the point that the noble Lord has just made about expertise would be entirely well taken. However, if we are to maintain the integrity of this experiment, or indeed project, then we must maintain the FPC as the focus for macroprudential regulatory management. That is why I referred to this element as dangerous, in the sense that it undermines that clear structure within the Bill.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, according to these provisions, when the Treasury specifies what macroprudential measures the FPC may exercise, the Treasury may, in relation to those macroprudential measures, confer functions on the regulator. It is intended that this is likely to be used for minor matters such as definitions. For example, the Treasury could provide that the FPC may impose additional capital requirements on exposures to residential property, and that the PRA, as the microregulator, would define the meaning of “residential property”.
There is, therefore, a web of interlocking provisions here, which I fear I did not do justice to in my first attempt to cut through this. Would it help the noble Lord if I take this one away, write to him and copy it to the other Members of the Committee who are here, to try to explain how these provisions will work together? I do not believe that there is any gap here, because it is ancillary to the basic directions that will come via the macroprudentials of the FPC. But there may be some ancillary matters, particularly definitional ones, where the expertise of the PRA or the FCA would be operative and for which we need therefore to keep this element and not to close this off in the way that Amendment 58 seeks to do. I will write to try to set that out more clearly. I am grateful to the noble Lord for that.
Amendment 61 would require the FPC to publish a policy statement within 10 days of a direction being made in relation to a measure made before the FPC had been able to issue a statement of policy under new Section 9L to be inserted into the Bank of England Act 1998 under Clause 3. Again, the Government agree that transparency and openness will be vital to ensure sufficient accountability for the FPC and the use of its tools. However, I believe that this amendment is not appropriate.
The Bill already provides that a policy statement is produced and maintained for each of the Bank’s macroprudential tools. This would also apply to those measures granted using the emergency procedure. However, if a situation were urgent, it would be counterproductive to require the FPC to wait until it has drafted and published a statement of policy before it could use that tool.
We would expect the FPC to produce a statement of policy for the tool as soon as reasonably practical afterwards, assuming that the tool remains in the FPC’s toolkit. I suggest that the requirement in Amendment 61 would be excessively restrictive.
Lord Peston
I am very puzzled by the Minister’s answer. That may be because I do not understand what a macroprudential measure is. Macro normally means economy-wide: it does not mean dealing with a specific bank in trouble or anything like that. I would take it to mean that the whole financial intermediation process was in danger of going wrong. I am finding it very hard to believe that, as a matter of urgency if the FPC was acting to deal with that, it would not immediately draft a statement. The idea that it will take time to say, “We have got a crisis on our hands and we are acting” is preposterous. It rather takes us back to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Flight, which carried the same kind of message. Surely, the point for the Minister to emphasise is that he wishes to make it clear that all of us take it for granted that the relevant decision-making body should do exactly what my noble friend says.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, the requirement is there for the statement to be made. Indeed, it would be the full expectation that a statement would be made. We believe that the Bill does not need any extra amendment in relation to statements that relate to macroprudential measures where they are exercised as a matter of urgency. The statement has to be made in any case.
Lord Eatwell
Perhaps I may help the noble Lord. I think that there was a slight misunderstanding in what he said in his initial answer on this amendment. He said that if there were an urgent situation, it would be inappropriate to wait for a statement to be made. That is not what this amendment says. It in no way prevents urgent measures being taken immediately. It simply says that if that is the case—as the noble Lord said, as soon as possible, and as I say, within 10 days—a statement should be produced. Surely, it is appropriate to give confidence and comfort to the markets that they can have some degree of expectation that a measure taken in urgency would be subject to a statement within a timeframe which is known to the markets and therefore provides them with appropriate comfort.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I do not believe that any additional requirement needs to be put in. The FPC already has transparency requirements at the heart of what it does. I completely agree that in certain cases, if it was an urgent matter, 10 days would not be the answer. It would make a statement based on the merits of the case either immediately, or on some other timescale. The Treasury would need to lay secondary legislation on an urgent basis to create the new tools required. Regardless of this provision, the laying of this secondary legislation would involve a public statement about the need for the tool and how it would be used. There is another backstop. If the new tool was required to be created, Parliament would immediately have a statement in front of it to back up the secondary legislation.
For a variety of reasons, Amendment 61 is redundant. On the basis of some partial explanations, and my commitment to write to him—particularly to explain in more detail how I believe the matters around Amendment 58 will operate—I ask if the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Eatwell
I am grateful to the noble Lord. Having a committee process where we go backwards and forwards on each particular amendment is helpful and removes the need for me to make a long summing-up speech. I will simply focus on Amendment 58, which has been the main matter of substance within this group which has exercised us, especially after the noble Lord clarified the issues of the consultations so well. Amendment 58 is still a serious problem, and I look forward to the noble Lord writing to me about it. Once I have his views in writing, perhaps we can consult further to find an appropriate way of sustaining the position of the FPC in the way that I have described. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Eatwell
Lord Eatwell
And now, my Lords, for something completely different. One of the objects relating to the governance of the Bank of England which we discussed in the first two days in Committee, and which is now coming up again, is to increase the collegiality of decision-making within the Bank, particularly with respect to this project. It seems that the deputy governor for financial stability is going to have an important role in the development of the FPC, the development of its activities and, indeed, its overall credibility and acceptance. It therefore seems entirely appropriate in these circumstances that the deputy governor for financial stability should be given a special status within the legislation, both in respect to consultation with the Treasury when an emergency order is introduced, and with respect to the discussions with the Chancellor of the Exchequer after the publication of the Financial Stability Report.
Amendment 56 seeks to place the deputy governor for financial stability within the framework of consultation when there is an emergency order. Overall responsibility rests with the governor. However, surely the deputy governor, who has the prime responsibility, should be consulted when there is likely to be an emergency order. Moreover, when the Treasury and the Bank have their formal discussions, which are required by the Bill, following the publication of the Financial Stability Report, it is surely appropriate that the person responsible for that report—the deputy governor for financial stability is the acting element in this respect—should be part of those conversations, as we require in Amendment 79.
If the Government accepted these amendments, we would feel much more comfortable about the overall governance structure of the Bank. It would acquire a more collegial framework, which we strongly feel is very appropriate to the development of these new measures. I beg to move.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, these amendments reprise an argument that was raised by the shadow Chancellor during the Bill’s Second Reading in another place.
As the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, said, Amendment 56 would require the Treasury to inform not only the governor but the deputy governor for financial stability when it considers that there is insufficient time for the FPC to be consulted on the introduction of a new macroprudential tool.
Amendment 79 would place in the Bill a requirement for the deputy governor for financial stability to attend the biannual meetings between the Chancellor and the governor following the publication of the FPC’s annual stability report.
Clearly the Bank plays a crucial role not only in relation to the management of the UK’s economy but specifically, under the Bill, in relation to macroprudential and microprudential regulation. In fulfilling these very important responsibilities, we expect the Bank to act as the serious and respected organisation that it is. This means that the senior executives of the Bank will work as a team to determine the best course of action to achieve the Bank’s objectives and comply with the legal obligations placed upon it. The governor is the leader of that team and, working closely with his senior executives, will ultimately take the key decisions within the Bank.
It is clear that the success of the new regulatory structure, which, rightly, we are spending so much time debating, relies heavily on the relationship between the Treasury and the Bank of England, and I believe that the Bill provides the necessary clarity of responsibilities. However, it also depends on the personal relationships at play here, particularly between the most senior leaders of the two bodies—the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England. One of the major problems leading up to the financial crisis was that the tripartite committee did not meet at principals level during the previous decade.
Therefore, there are clearly things that need to be legislated for, and this is not what the noble Lord is in any way seeking to argue against, but it is important background to this discussion. The Chancellor and the governor must meet regularly to discuss financial stability. That is why the Bill and the regulatory structure that it establishes place at the heart of the matter the institutional relationship between the Treasury and the Bank, and the personal relationship between the Chancellor and the governor.
I do not see any reason to attempt to insert into that relationship a further statutory channel of communication. First, I just do not believe that it is needed. The Treasury ministerial team regularly meets the current deputy governor for financial stability and the chief executive of the FSA. There is also a constant dialogue between the deputy governor and senior Treasury officials via meetings, phone calls and e-mails. The same was true under the previous Government, as I know, since I was part of it for three years, and it was very effective at working level. That has not changed and it will not change under the new structure. In practice, the deputy governor may well attend the biannual meetings between the two principals. If the Treasury notified the governor that a new macroprudential instrument needed to be introduced on an urgent basis, the deputy governor would be well aware of that.
I will just point out one slight correction that is relevant to this, which is that the FPC is responsible for the financial stability report to the deputy governor. That is relevant to the discussion of this amendment because it shows that we should not excessively personalise the relationships or draw attention to particular individuals if that risks, as it may do in this instance, causing confusion about who is responsible for what. I agree that the relationship with the two leaders of the bodies, the Treasury and the Bank of England, should be hard-wired in, as we have done. In practice, the deputy governor is, and will be, very much involved in all the relevant discussions. Amendments 79 and 56 are not necessary and go too far.
There is a strong argument here that such a provision could be positively unhelpful by opening the door to the possibility that the Bank may be divided and encouraged to speak with more than one voice. There is a risk of recreating elements of dysfunctionality that were in the system as it used to exist. I do not want to overplay this, since the main argument is the earlier one. However, I do see a slight but secondary danger that this provision could be built on in the wrong circumstances. On the basis of the earlier explanations, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, will withdraw this amendment.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, the noble Lord’s comments have been very valuable. The Government have continuously argued that the tripartite system set out by the previous Government did not work because of its structure. He has now admitted that it did not work because the principals did not work it and did not meet. That is a very different issue. The fact that the principals did not meet, and that we now find the need for them to meet in primary legislation, illustrates that it was not the structure that was wrong but the people working in it that went wrong.
I agree with the noble Lord that the Bank should work as a team. I am very much in favour of that. However, we have to distinguish between the captain of the team and those who take the penalty kicks. We may want Martin Johnson to be the captain but we want Jonny Wilkinson to take the kicks. In those circumstances, the particular specialist role of the deputy governor for financial stability seems to be an important element in effective communication between the Treasury and the Bank. Moreover, the noble Lord expressed, in a careful way, that this might expose differences in the Bank’s position and suggested that this might create dysfunctionality. There are differences in this Committee, but this Committee is not dysfunctional. It is making progress. The differences between us are highlighting, as it is their role to highlight, some problems in the Bill that can make it a better Bill, which is our entire objective. I do not accept that differences within a reasonably run organisation necessarily lead to dysfunctionality. That seems to be Sir Humphrey rampant, determined that there is a singular position.
The whole issue of governance of the Bank is still somewhat in the air. This is one element that we wished to put in the Bill and felt would be enormously helpful. Now the noble Lord has recognised that the tripartite system did not fail because of its structure, but because of the personalities who failed to work it, I hope that he will consider the value of these amendments when we return to them on Report.
Lord Barnett
I was confused before we started and my noble friend and the Minister have confused me even more. They talk about teams; apparently there is a Treasury team and a team from the PRA, MPC or FCA—I am not sure which it is. There are various teams who will be meeting to solve a crisis if it arises. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, of course, would know nothing about all of this. The people who know something about it might be here with us, including the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, who is a member of the team, apparently. Maybe he will take the penalty kicks.
Lord Barnett
We are talking about possible serious financial crises and stability. At the end of the day, the Chancellor will be held responsible if something goes wrong with financial stability. There could be as many teams as we liked, but the Chancellor would ultimately have to accept responsibility, even if he knew nothing about it. I am sure that any Chancellor—I am looking at one now—would know everything that was going on in his team.
I am confused about what the clause or the Bill will do to help us in this matter. My noble friend’s amendment might help, although we are told by the Minister that it could “excessively personalise”. I am blessed if I know what that is supposed to mean, but no doubt the Minister will tell us. At the moment, I am more confused than ever. I thought that I understood a few things about financial matters but, listening to the exchange between my noble friend and the Minister, I am confused more than ever.
Lord Eatwell
Perhaps before I sit down I can help my noble friend. We are discussing what is perceived to be an essential failure of the previous system. The failure was that the people responsible for working it did not take advantage of the tools that were provided. Here in the Bill, as the Minister pointed out, the Government have rightly insisted that the Treasury and the Bank convey information to each other, consult each other and act collectively when necessary. That is appropriate, and I commend the Government in that respect. I simply think that they have not gone far enough.
Lord Peston
If my noble friend were to ask himself who would know most about a macroprudential measure in the Bank, surely that would be the deputy governor, because that is his job. My noble friend is saying that the Treasury should consult. I would argue that the Treasury is sensible enough to know that it should consult the one person who would know what was going on.
Lord Eatwell
Just to reinforce what I said, neither the Government nor this side have entire confidence in the consultation procedure between the Bank and Treasury as it has taken place in the past. The Government are seeking to reinforce that confidence, and I wanted to reinforce it further. But at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Noakes
“(1A) If the Treasury considers it appropriate to proceed with the making of an order under section 9K, the Treasury may lay before Parliament—
(a) a draft order, and(b) an explanatory document.(1B) The explanatory document laid under subsection (1A) must—
(a) introduce and give reasons for the order,(b) explain why the Treasury considers that the order serves the purpose in section 9K, and(c) be accompanied by a copy of any representations received from the FPC or the Governor.(1C) The Treasury may not act under subsection (1A) before the end of the period of 12 weeks beginning with the day on which the consultation began, unless the order is made in accordance with section 9K(2)(b).
(1D) Subject as follows, if after the expiry of the 40-day period the draft order laid under subsection (1A) is approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament, the Minister may make an order in the terms of the draft order.
(1E) The procedure in subsections (1F) to (1J) shall apply to the draft order instead of the procedure in subsection (1D) if—
(a) either House of Parliament so resolves within the 30-day period, or(b) a committee of either House charged with reporting on the draft order so recommends within the 30-day period and the House to which the recommendation is made does not by resolution reject the recommendation within the period.(1F) The Minister must have regard to—
(a) any representations,(b) any resolution of either House of Parliament, and(c) any recommendation of a committee of either House of Parliament charged with reporting on the draft order, made during the 60-day period with regard to the draft order.(1G) If after the expiry of the 60-day period the draft order is approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament, the Minister may make an order in the terms of the draft order.
(1H) If after the expiry of the 60-day period the Minister wishes to proceed with the draft order but with the material changes, the Minister may lay before Parliament—
(a) a revised draft order, and(b) a statement giving a summary of the changes proposed.(1J) If the revised draft order is approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament, the Minister may make an order in the terms of the revised draft order.
(1K) For the purposes of this section, an order is made in the terms of a draft order or revised draft order if it contains no material changes to its provisions.
(1L) In this section, references to the “30-day”, “40-day” and “60-day” periods in relation to any draft order are to the periods of 30, 40 and 60 days beginning with the day on which the draft order was laid before Parliament.
(1M) For the purposes of subsection (1L), no account is to be taken of any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued or during which either House is adjourned for more than four days.”
Baroness Noakes
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McFall, is unable to be with us this afternoon because he is en route to receiving an honorary degree tomorrow, which I am sure the Committee will agree is well deserved.
This is another amendment that the noble Lord, Lord McFall, and I have tabled to ensure that the issues covered in the first report in this Session of the Treasury Select Committee in another place are properly debated. I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has added his name to the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has already emphasised the importance of the macroprudential tools which are covered by new Sections 9G to 9M. I am sure that the thrust behind these new sections will command general support, but the detail of the new tools must be approached with very great care. My noble friend does not like the term “experiment”, but most of us think that if something looks like an experiment and sounds like an experiment, it is an experiment. We cannot get away from the fact that, because these macroprudential tools have not been used before in this country, nor is there much international experience to go by, we are talking about something very new which should receive very considerable scrutiny. Not even the Bank of England claims a monopoly of wisdom on what these macro- prudential matters should be.
This experimental phase will run for some time. The measures that are initially specified will almost certainly vary over time, as the focus of risks to financial stability changes and as experience is gained of working with the measures. We have something that is very new and, as the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has also pointed out, these are very powerful tools to be placed into the hands of the FPC. We have already seen the FPC’s first shot at what it believes those macroprudential tools should be. It has suggested a countercyclical capital buffer, sectoral capital requirements and a leverage ratio. At that time the FPC said that some other measures, such as loan-to-value ratios and loan-to-income ratios, would need public support before they were introduced. I would like to suggest that all the potential measures need public support and therefore there has to be proper debate before it would be wise to introduce them. The Government have, correctly, decided that the new measures cannot simply be set by the FPC or the Bank. They have to be prescribed by the Treasury by order, and that order is subject to parliamentary approval. That meets the point which troubled the noble Lord, Lord Peston, a little while ago.
So far, so good. The measures are to be initially specified by the Treasury, not left to the Bank and the FPC, and they have to be approved by Parliament. The problem is that new Section 9M prescribes the draft affirmative procedure. This procedure is, of course, better than the ordinary affirmative procedure which is, in turn, better than the negative procedure. However, none of these procedures is, in truth, more than a rubber stamp. Oppositions know this only too well, but that knowledge seems somehow to evaporate when they find themselves on the government Benches. Some of us still remember.
The importance of the macroprudential measures lies not in their technical specification and potential impact on financial stability, though those are very important issues. The equally important issues are the consequences of using the measures and their impact on the wider economy. These matters need proper scrutiny and debate both in Parliament and, as we discussed earlier, outside. Once the FPC has been granted these measures they will be able to use them without any further parliamentary intervention. The price for getting these wrong could be very high and so Parliament needs to be very sure that it understands the potential impact of the powers and that it has an opportunity to amend or circumscribe them if that is appropriate. The only way we can get a proper debate in these terms is through the use of the super-affirmative procedure, and that is what the amendment proposes.
The Treasury Select Committee in another place believes that the super-affirmative procedure is appropriate and fully in accordance with Erskine May, which describes the procedure as used,”
“in enactments where an exceptionally high degree of scrutiny is appropriate”.
It is inescapable that these measures fall into that category. It is generally the case that Governments never start out thinking that the super-affirmative procedure is the right one. However, the will of Parliament does sometimes prevail over the Executive in this area.
The Government recently accepted in the Public Bodies Act 2011 that their powers to wind up such hugely important bodies as the Home Grown Timber Advisory Committee or the Railway Heritage Committee should be subject to the super-affirmative procedure, but it appears that they have yet to be convinced that granting these massive new powers to the FPC is of that importance. It is a no-brainer that the super-affirmative procedure should be used and I hope that my noble friend will be prepared to accept that that is the case.
I am aware that the Delegated Powers Committee, which I hold in the highest regard, has not raised objections to the affirmative procedure in the Bill. That is interesting but not conclusive. The final arbiter on these matters is Parliament. The Delegated Powers Committee acts as an early warning system of problems for Parliament to address. The committee does not act on behalf of Parliament to approve particular procedures.
In responding to the Treasury Select Committee, the Government have raised concerns about timing and, in particular, the impact of recesses. This is a red herring. We are not generally dealing with matters which need to be introduced immediately. However, if the FPC woke up one morning with an urgent need to acquire a new macroprudential tool, one’s first reaction would be that that was surprising. However, if that were genuinely the case and the Treasury were committed, my Amendment 62 does not remove the ability to act with urgency. The powers set out in new Section 9M for the made affirmative procedure can be used when the Treasury is convinced of the urgency of the matter.
When the Governor of the Bank of England came to talk to a number of us last week, he rightly emphasised the accountability of the Bank and the FPC to Parliament. Accountability is an ex post concept: Parliament also has to have the ability to be involved fully ex ante in the formulation of important matters such as the macroprudential measures, and the super-affirmative procedure is the only proper way to proceed. I beg to move.
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Noakes in her Amendment 162. Like my noble friend, I believe that there should be stronger parliamentary scrutiny of the macroprudential tools.
While I accept that there must be flexibility to grant the FPC new tools quickly in rare and urgent circumstances, I still agree with the Treasury Select Committee’s report on the accountability of the Bank of England. As the legislation stands, approval by the House of Commons requires only a 90-minute debate in a general committee and a decision without debate in the House. Like the Select Committee, I recommend that the Government amend the draft legislation to require debates on orders prescribing macroprudential measures to be held on the Floor of the House and not be subject to the 90-minute restriction. The House would benefit from prior scrutiny of such orders by the committee. This view is supported by the Joint Committee on the draft Financial Services Bill, which agrees that there should be a system of enhanced parliamentary scrutiny of these important tools. Like my noble friend Lady Noakes, I was disappointed. Although I respect enormously the Delegated Powers Committee, I felt that its arguments for not wishing this were not as substantial as I would have liked.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, I, too, support the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in her amendment. I also commend the Treasury Select Committee on having done such a good job in presenting the arguments for appropriate scrutiny of elements in the Bill.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, pointed out, the measures which the Financial Policy Committee is to have in its hands are extremely powerful. Let us consider introducing a leverage ratio in British banking. That notion has not existed within the structure or organisation of British banking. It would change entirely the relationship between the liability side and the asset side of the balance sheet of British banks. It is a major measure which thereby deserves appropriate consideration of the sort set out in the amendment.
Let us consider also the other tool which the FPC is claiming as appropriate for itself: pro-cyclical provisioning. Pro-cyclical provisioning involves enormously complicated decisions, both in the banking sector and in accountancy. Accountants tend to be very hostile to the notion of provisioning since it can be used to hide profits. It is a standard procedure which was common in the Enron case. If we are going to formulate a structure of pro-cyclical provisioning which not only achieves the goals that the FPC and all of us want but satisfies the complex needs of appropriate accounting—we have seen recently how accounting can be misused in the banking sector—these measures require very careful scrutiny. As the noble Baroness said so clearly, a 90-minute debate, which is then a rubber stamp, is entirely inappropriate. The procedure set out in the amendment would not only provide that level of scrutiny but contribute to the public confidence in these procedures which is vital if we are to achieve the goals which we have set out for the FPC.
Lord Peston
My Lords, I remind the Committee by way of background that we are discussing adverse, exogenous shocks to the financial intermediation process. Those shocks are impossible to forecast and extremely hard to recognise even when they hit the system. My understanding of why we require macroprudential measures is that it improves the way in which the system works so as to be able to cope with those shocks. It is partly to protect the system of financial intermediation and partly to improve its effectiveness and efficiency—so we have no difficulty about that.
However, if we need these instruments, it follows that in a democracy—and I still include your Lordships’ House as part of our democracy—Parliament must be able to scrutinise them appropriately. As the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, is well aware, I am not an expert on all the different kinds of orders, and she simply lost me on them, but I ask her whether the measures set out in her amendment give Parliament, including your Lordships' House, a full right to scrutinise the introduction of the macroprudential measures and—here I got a bit lost—to amend them in the sense of saying to the Government, “We think that what you are doing is right, but you can do it in a rather better way.”? If that is what the amendment says, and I see the noble Baroness nodding, the Minister has a duty to the House to say, at the very least, that he will take it away and think it through.
Lord Barnett
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in a way, although the amendment would add even more confusion to the Bill than is already there. My noble friend Lord Peston referred to the fact that it is about shocks. I hope it is not an urgent shock, because the amendment would give time for draft orders to be laid for a period of up to 60 days or before the end of a period of 12 weeks. Then there must be orders in both Houses. I assume that both Houses would also take advice from their Select Committees. All that will be going on while urgency is required. I find the whole thing as confusing as my noble friend does. We are told at the end of the amendment that if this shock arises when the House is not sitting, all kinds of other things happen. As my noble friend said, if the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, cannot clarify the whole thing for us in asking for the amendment to be withdrawn, we should be glad if he would take it away to think about it further and let us know what he or someone else thinks about it.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I am very much in favour of scrutiny by this House. I cannot pretend to be an expert either on the different varieties of orders or on the different measurements and tools that the FPC might introduce, but I would be concerned about a mechanism in this House that enabled tools to be amended. Although we have some experts, the capacity to understand the internal workings of a tool with sufficient precision to be able to introduce an amendment to a ratio strikes me as not the particular skill of a legislature or this House. We can raise questions about it or require that it be dismissed because the Government have not sufficiently made their case, but to amend it is not a skill with which we are particularly equipped.
For that reason, and with great respect to the House, it seems to me that the capacity for amendment is inappropriate in this case. The capacity to force the Government to make their case and to judge on that case is entirely appropriate, but not the capacity to substitute; that worries me.
Lord Myners
My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with the amendment. I declare my interest as a former member of the court from 2004 to 2008. I fully support the creation of the Financial Policy Committee—I think that it will become the most important committee in the Bank—but I am deeply anxious about the governance of the Bank and the lack of appropriate oversight from the court, the oversight committee as envisaged or, indeed, Parliament.
The Minister is in many ways the architect of this restructuring of regulation, as part of a project which he led for the Opposition, having ceased to work in the Treasury. I understand his thinking in evolving the proposals, but events have moved on. In the light of what we now know about the Bank of England, we must ask whether it is still right to put so much authority in the hands of the Bank without appropriate accountability.
When I was a member of the court, I sat in on a meeting of the Financial Stability Committee. That would have been in 2006 or 2007. At that meeting, one of the governors proposed that as a mechanism to cope with the crisis, the Bank should buy half a dozen or a dozen bicycles in order that members of the Bank could move swiftly and anonymously around the City. That tells us a huge amount about where the Bank sits in terms of its understanding of the complexity of financial markets. Some of the things that we have seen over the past few weeks have simply raised more questions about the wisdom of putting so much power in the hands of the Bank.
We are also about to have a piece of legislation to implement the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Banking. Having been intimately involved in the Government’s response to the banking crisis from 2008 onwards, I would point out that the losses incurred in the British banking system—at HBOS, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland—largely occurred within the ring-fence. The losses of $5 billion which we have seen recently reported in London from JP Morgan took place within the ring-fence as envisaged by the Vickers report. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, looks somewhat sceptical about that. Those losses occurred within the treasury operations, or the investment office, of JP Morgan, and as such lay within the ring-fence rather than outside it. In being sympathetic to this amendment, and hoping that at the very least the Minister will go away and reflect on that, I think that the Minister will have to rethink some of the fundamental building blocks of this legislation—in particular the great powers and responsibilities that we are placing in the hands of the Bank of England—before we reach its next stage. These are powers and responsibilities that the Bank of England has historically not had and, in my judgment, is still not equipped to exercise.
If we are to do this then, at the very minimum, we must ensure that the Bank and its various agencies, including the Financial Policy Committee, are properly accountable to a court which is clear about its functions and clear about who it reports to. As a former member of the court I know that it was never clear who we reported to. It must also be clear about its parliamentary accountability.
Lord Sassoon
It is always entertaining to have one of the Second Reading speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Myners. I am not sure what it had to do with this particular amendment—which is to do with super-affirmative procedures in respect of orders made by the Treasury—but, anyway, we did talk extensively about governance of the Bank of England over the last couple of sessions, and there will no doubt be other opportunities to talk about them. Here we are talking about an amendment that seeks to require macroprudential orders to be subject to the so-called super-affirmative procedure. Although I was not going to question the competence of Parliament to get into the detail of the macroprudential tools, my noble friend Lady Kramer did make a powerful point about the level of scrutiny that is appropriate to tools that are—yes—very important but also highly technical.
I say that in the context of believing that proper parliamentary scrutiny of these tools will be important to the overall accountability. That is why the Bill, as has been noted, requires the macroprudential orders to be subject to the affirmative procedure. As the Committee would expect, the Government maintain that that strikes the right balance between accountability and timeliness. Orders cannot be made unless a draft is laid before and approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.
I will of course draw attention to what the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee had to say, although my noble friend Lady Noakes dismisses its remarks as “interesting but not conclusive”. As a statement of fact, it is clear that its remarks are not conclusive. However, I take issue with her when she dismisses its remarks as “interesting”, because I think that we should take the consideration of the DPRRC very seriously on matters such as this. For the help of the Committee I shall quote the relevant paragraph, because I think that it shows that the DPRRC has thought about this matter in detail. It states:
“The importance of the power is recognised by the application of the draft affirmative procedure or, in urgent cases, the 28-day ‘made affirmative’ procedure … The Joint Committee on the Draft Bill and the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee have recommended an enhanced affirmative procedure for the non-urgent orders, based on that in the Public Bodies Act 2011. But the affirmative procedure provided for in the Bill should be a sufficient safeguard against inappropriate use of these powers.”
I really do not think that we should dismiss what the committee has said.
Lord Peston
My Lords, one of our difficulties in discussing this matter is that no one has mentioned a specific macroprudential measure. We are discussing them totally in the abstract, so perhaps I might mention a couple and say why the positive approach might well be relevant. If we look back to the corrupt practices of the past on the part of financial intermediaries, I suppose the worst of them was the mixing up of a package of toxic and non-toxic assets and then marketing them as if they were non-toxic. I would assume that for the relevant body here, if it was confronted with this, it would be relevant to introduce a macroprudential measure to say that that is simply not going to happen. It would describe the measure and intervene. The Minister shakes his head. Is he saying that that is not an example of a macroprudential measure?
Lord Sassoon
I would say that examples of macroprudential measures are things such as leveraged ratios. If we are talking about the mis-selling of products, that is generally not going to be a question of macroprudential tools but a conduct matter that the FCA would deal with. They would not be the sorts of things covered in the macro toolkit of the Financial Policy Committee, as the noble Lord describes it.
Lord Peston
Speaking as an economist, that sounds complete nonsense to me. I point out to the Minister that the measure I have just described was at the centre of the collapse of both the British and American financial systems in the post-2007 era. This is precisely what these financial intermediaries were up to and precisely what led to the enormous damage that all the economies have suffered. How the Minister can possibly say that that is not a relevant tool is completely beyond me. I could give him some more examples, but let us leave it at that one.
The only question then is whether the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is right that if it were introduced as an order we could not debate it in a way to be able to say that the Government’s method of dealing with this problem could be bettered. That is the only point at issue here. I would not like us to do this all the time. I would simply like us—and I mean the other place at least as much as us—to have the power to be able to say, “We can see that you’ve identified the problem and that you’ve got a solution, which you’re introducing by this order, but we think you could do it better this way”. That is all I am arguing and I cannot see what is unreasonable about it.
Baroness Kramer
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Peston, for giving way on that because I am again working in murky waters here. The Minister may correct me but I think the example that he referred to was of a leverage ratio, in which the assets had to be weighted in some way for their riskiness or toxicity. There would be an argument for using those weights within a leveraged ratio, would there not? You can use risk weights on anything, I say, having used them. However, that is not the kind of detail we would want to get into on the Floor of this House. My argument is that it would become so highly technical. If there is an amending capacity, that is exactly where we will take ourselves—and without a series of blackboards and three academics to lead us through it, I am not sure we could manage, frankly.
Baroness Noakes
Perhaps I might intervene on whether there is the power to amend or not. Debating under super-affirmative procedure is not like considering a Bill. There are no amendments tabled and voted on but there is the ability of either House to pass a resolution saying what it thinks. Much as the noble Lord, Lord Peston, articulated, either House would be able to consider whether it thought that the tools were up to the job. More importantly, as I tried to explain in my opening remarks, Parliament could consider the potential impact of using those tools and say to the Government whether it thought the tools appropriate in the context of the wider impact, not simply the narrow impact, on the regulation of financial institutions. The super-affirmative procedure does not allow a specific amendment process but it allows Parliament to say, “Government, we think you have got this wrong”. It is in contradistinction to any of the other procedures where we have the nuclear option: we either accept the order or we do not accept it. It is a more deliberative and amenable process, in particular for considering these very new tools which are being talked about. I hope that helps the Committee.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, this has been a helpful additional go-round of the tracks because it illustrates, I suggest, that with the procedures already in the Bill and the commitment that my right honourable friend the Chancellor has made to debate the toolkit on the Floor in another place—the same could apply here, clearly, subject to the usual channels agreeing it—we have in substance exactly what my noble friend wants to achieve. We have that without locking ourselves into the difficulty that goes with the 124 days, plus Recess time, which we can get locked into in cases that may be either minor ones where none of this is warranted or, more particularly, ones that started off not being urgent but then became more so. Having had this useful go-round and with the reassurance I have given of what the Chancellor has committed to, I ask my noble friend if she will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Noakes
My Lords, the Minister has not appreciated the difference between the affirmative procedure and the super-affirmative procedure. Simply having a debate can have only one outcome, of approving or not approving the order, and that is the fundamental flaw. It is the thing that we all learn in opposition and that all Governments forget. Whether or not additional time is allowed or whether a different procedure is adopted in the other place may well improve the quality of debate but it cannot change its outcome. In your Lordships’ House, it is always open to us to have a debate on a draft order on the Floor of the House by the simple mechanism of any noble Lord tabling some kind of Motion disagreeing with it. That will automatically bring it into the Chamber. That is not the problem; the issue is the outcome.
The super-affirmative procedure is a more deliberative procedure; it allows views to be expressed without going so far as to say, “We are not having it”—the outcome of which is usually described as very harmful. That is why the House has a general practice of not voting orders down, because it is such a dangerous thing to do. That is why this super-affirmative procedure gives each House of Parliament more opportunity to debate all the issues contained within the order. It may be that we need a greater range of ways of handling this; however, all the methods of handling an order other than the super-affirmative can allow only acceptance or rejection of the whole. That is a difficult thing for the House to do—to put itself in the position of disagreeing with the whole.
The other issue is delay, although I do not see an issue here. The issue is about whether we take the right amount of time to get the thing right. The Government have available in the Bill, unaffected by my amendment, the ability to put something through on an urgent basis. Nobody would dream of circumscribing that power, because it may well be necessary. Even in the middle of the process to get a new measure through, if it was suddenly decided that it was so important that it had to come in urgently, the Government could default to that procedure. As I said earlier, the timing issue is therefore a red herring. The issue is about whether government can give the proper amount of time and consideration to these important new measures.
I will consider carefully what my noble friend has said, but my first instincts are that he has not said enough to convince me that the super-affirmative procedure is not the appropriate procedure for these new measures. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord De Mauley
“Explanation9QA Duty to prepare explanation
(1) In connection with the exercise of any of the specified powers, the Financial Policy Committee must prepare an explanation of—
(a) the reasons for the Committee’s decision to exercise the power, in the way in which it is being exercised, and(b) the Committee’s reasons for believing that the exercise of the power, in the way in which it is being exercised, is compatible with the duties of the Committee under the following provisions—(i) section 9C(1) (as read with section 9C(4)), and(ii) section 9E.(2) The specified powers are—
(a) the power to give a direction under section 9G;(b) the power to make recommendations under section 9N, so far as relating to the exercise of the Bank’s functions in relation to payment systems, settlement systems and clearing houses;(c) the power to make recommendations under section 9O, so far as relating to the exercise by the Treasury of their power to make orders under any of the provisions mentioned in subsection (2) of that section;(d) the power to make recommendations under section 9P.(3) The explanation required by subsection (1) in relation to the duty in section 9E(3)(a) must include an estimate of the costs and an estimate of the benefits that would arise from compliance with the direction or recommendation in question, unless in the opinion of the Committee it is not reasonably practicable to include such an estimate.”
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, this group of government Amendments 69A, 69B, 76A, 76B and 76D seeks to strengthen the transparency and openness of the decision-making procedures of the FPC. We have already debated the government amendments providing the FPC with a secondary objective for economic growth. The Government are making the changes to this group of amendments in response to those who have argued that the FPC should be required more explicitly to balance the demands of financial stability and economic growth.
Amendment 69A supplements this important addition by requiring the FPC to prepare an explanatory statement when exercising its powers of direction and recommendation in relation to the PRA, FCA, the Treasury or the Bank in relation to the Bank’s regulatory functions. Such statements must clearly explain how the FPC considers the exercise of its powers to be consistent with its objectives, including both its primary stability objective and its secondary objective for economic growth—the “brake” which prevents the FPC taking any action that would seriously damage long-term growth. The statement must also explain the FPC’s view of the compatibility of its actions with its duties under new Section 9E, which require it to have regard to the Bank’s financial stability strategy; to the need to avoid, as far as possible, requiring the PRA or FCA to act in a manner prejudicial to their own objectives; and to the important principles in regulation of proportionality, transparency and international co-operation and co-ordination. Amendment 76A requires the statement to be published in the next financial stability report.
The effect of these amendments will be to ensure that all interested parties—Parliament, the financial services industry and members of the public—will be able to examine, and indeed challenge, the balance that the FPC seeks to strike between stability and growth. I hope that noble Lords will agree that these are important additions to the FPC, increasing its transparency and accountability, and that they will therefore agree to them.
However, the Government are going further than this. Once the FPC has taken action, through its powers of direction and recommendation, Amendment 69B requires it to keep any open action under regular review. In the case of extant directions—that is, directions which have not been revoked—the FPC must review them at least annually. In the case of recommendations, the FPC must make arrangements to keep under review those recommendations it considers to be of continuing relevance. This will ensure that, once it has taken a specific action, the FPC will from time to time consider whether that action remains necessary and proportionate.
Amendment 76B requires the FPC to publish summaries of such reviews in the financial stability report, once again providing for improved openness and accountability. These are important procedural additions which underline the Government’s commitment to establishing the FPC as a balanced and proportionate macroprudential regulator. I beg to move.
Lord Myners
As I listened to the Minister, it seemed to me that he was implying that there may be times when the FPC has no recommendations outstanding. Surely, however, the FPC will always have recommendations outstanding. It will always have a preferred leverage ratio or a gearing ratio or a deposit to loan or some other of the macroeconomic tools that it has to apply to the banking sector. I am not sure how keeping recommendations under review and reporting on them actually works in a situation in which there will always be recommendations in place. I cannot envisage a situation in which the FPC will say, “We have no views on anything, and therefore there is nothing that we need to be reporting and monitoring”. I may have misunderstood the point; if I have, I apologise, but I would appreciate some guidance from the Minister.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, we broadly welcome these amendments, in the sense that they are adding to the overall scrutiny and assessment of the activities of the FPC and thereby reinforcing, we believe, its general acceptability and strength of purpose. However, I want to raise a warning flag with respect to new Section 9QA(3), in which it is argued that the FPC will have to prepare,
“an estimate of the costs and an estimate of the benefits that would arise from … the direction or recommendation in question”.
These are macroeconomic measures. It is virtually impossible to provide a simple numerical estimate of the cost or benefit of a macro measure. There will be either a tendency to overestimate the costs, or a tendency to overestimate the benefit, in this particular case. Presenting an assessment in quantitative terms will give spurious precision and, indeed, spurious credibility to a particular measure. I assure the Minister that for any macro measure, I could write an entirely credible report saying that the costs exceeded the benefits and an equally credible report saying that the benefits exceeded the costs. This is simply extending the whole notion of cost-benefit analysis beyond the range in which it can effectively operate. It would be valuable to take account of an attempt to describe in broad qualitative terms the costs and benefits. However, please let us not have the spurious precision of numerical calculations of variables which, by their very nature, cannot be expressed in precise terms.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for those questions. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, says that effectively there will always be a recommendation that is extant. He is probably right about that. The requirement is to review regularly any recommendations that have a continuing effect, and that includes any recommendations to set or maintain any particular level of leverage or capital, as the noble Lord suggests. I broadly agree with him, actually.
The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, is right to say that a cost-benefit analysis is a difficult thing to do. That does not mean that the committee should not attempt it, so that at least interested parties have an opportunity to review it and make their comments.
Lord Sassoon
“Review9QB Duty to review directions and recommendations
(1) The Financial Policy Committee must—
(a) before the end of each review period, review each direction given by it under section 9G, other than a direction revoked before the end of the review period, and(b) prepare a summary of its conclusions.(2) A review period is—
(a) in relation to the first review, the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which the direction was given, and(b) in relation to subsequent reviews, the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which the previous review was completed.(3) The Financial Policy Committee must maintain arrangements for the review at regular intervals of any recommendations that it has made under any of sections 9N to 9Q and are of continuing relevance.”
Lord Sassoon
Lord Sassoon
“(4A) If during the reporting period the Committee has made any decision in relation to which section 9QA requires the preparation of an explanation, the financial stability report must include the required explanation.”
“(4B) If during the reporting period the Committee has completed the review of a direction or recommendation, the financial stability report must include a summary of the review.”
Lord Eatwell
“9WA Financial Stability Advisory Panel
(1) There will be a Financial Stability Advisory Panel.
(2) The membership of the Panel will be—
(a) the Deputy Governor for Financial Stability;(b) 6 members appointed by the Treasury, subject to approval by the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons;and the members appointed under paragraph (b) will be academics, members of staff of international organisations, practitioners, or others with particular skills in the analysis of systemic risk. (3) The Financial Stability Advisory Panel will—
(a) provide written advice to the Financial Policy Committee concerning the analysis of systemic risk;(b) once a year prepare a report assessing the analysis of systemic risk by the Financial Policy Committee over the preceding 12 months (the first report to be twelve months after this section comes into force);(c) assess the effectiveness of measures prescribed under section 9K in the attainment of the financial stability objective of the Bank;(d) assess the effectiveness of directions and recommendations of the Financial Policy Committee under sections 9G and 9N in the attainment of the financial stability objective of the Bank;(e) prepare an annual report on matters referred to in section 9WA(3) to be presented by the Supervisory Board of the Bank, and subsequently published on the Bank website.”
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, the development of macroprudential regulators, the instruments for introducing macroprudential regulation, is a common theme in the UK, the European Union and the United States. Different models have been developed for the institution that is to be responsible for macroprudential regulation. In our own model, the Financial Policy Committee, we see what could be called a “central bank model”, where the alternative voices being brought to the table are to be represented by the independent members of the FPC. It will fall to them to challenge Bank of England house thinking and provide alternative perspectives. There is only a very small number of external members on the FPC and finding members with the experience and skills necessary to perform the role that we demand of them is, as has already been seen, very difficult, although at the moment we have an excellent group in the shadow FPC. An alternative model, which has been adopted by the United States Financial Stability Oversight Council, pursues a more stakeholder-oriented approach in which the appropriate voices from stakeholders actually have a direct role in the organisation of macroprudential measures within the United States.
Both the central bank model that we have pursued, which also applies to the European systemic risk board, and the stakeholder model have disadvantages. The key disadvantage of our central bank model is that we do not have enough diversity of opinion or access to new research and critical assessments of FPC measures that the stakeholder model might have. The problem with the stakeholder model is that the United States may find that its Financial Stability Oversight Council becomes mired in differences of opinion from different stakeholder interests and has difficulty in pursuing the coherent macroprudential policy that is required of it.
As we know, this whole area is, as I said earlier, an experiment—or, if the Minister prefers, a project. We are dealing with areas and matters that at present are uncertain. There is little agreed analysis or clear empirical assessment of how some of these tools will actually work. We will find out. We are going to experiment. We therefore need to harvest the widest possible spectrum of analysis. The amendment proposes that there should be a financial stability advisory panel, not a panel that is intimately involved in designing and implementing the measures. Those independent voices are provided by the independent members of the FPC but they are necessarily compromised by their role in dealing with very sensitive matters as they might have conflicts of interest if they have a wider role in the financial services industry. The financial stability advisory panel could contain individuals with such conflicts of interest because they would not have a role in actually managing the macroprudential organisation of the FPC.
The amendment suggests that we have this financial stability advisory panel providing that diversity of view from academics, perhaps from members of staff of international organisations such as the Bank for International Settlements, which is making a lot of the running in the development of macroprudential tools, and potentially from others who have particular skills in the analysis of systemic risk. It will be their responsibility to provide written advice to the FPC, prepare an annual assessment of the FPC’s performance, look at the effectiveness of individual measures and assess the effectiveness of particular directions and recommendations in the context of an annual report or assessment. This cannot do anything but good. It is simply an institutionalisation of the detailed examination, the variety of voices and the consideration of effectiveness that are so necessary in providing both coherence to the FPC and its general acceptance. A panel of this sort, given the responsibilities that are set out in the amendment, would add significantly to the effectiveness of the Financial Policy Committee. I beg to move.
Lord Stewartby
My Lords, I was interested to hear the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, on the nature of the work that will face the panel. It sounds like something that overlaps considerably with the Board of Banking Supervision in the late 1980s. Obviously that was working in different circumstances, but each of the bodies require, or required, people of an unusual stripe who combine a practical experience of banking, and the difficult areas that it brings with it, with a particular canniness in identifying areas where they think that things are not as they should be, particularly in cases where that is not always evident until later when events have already taken place.
Are the would-be members of the panel now shadowing the work that will be theirs in statutory form as a result of the Bill? It is terribly important to get the people involved carrying a great deal of weight and clout but at the same time having inquiring minds—something that will help us to ferret out areas that have been unsatisfactorily dealt with. I will not say more now, but I am pleased that some of the reasons for having a panel such as this—20 years ago or more it was called the Board of Banking Supervision, or the BoBS—have been recognised as important in today’s different but difficult circumstances.
Lord Davies of Stamford
My Lords, I have considered carefully over the last 24 hours whether I should say what I am now about to say to the House, but I have decided that it is right to. My noble friend’s amendment, which I support in principle, says in proposed new Section 9WA(2)(a):
“The membership of the Panel will be … the Deputy Governor for Financial Stability”.
In light of his answers yesterday to the Treasury Select Committee, it is completely wrong that the present deputy governor for financial stability should be given these responsibilities on this financial advisory panel, or any other responsibilities for financial stability. In the course of the performance yesterday, during which I assume that his answers were entirely honest and frank, he effectively made a plea of guilty to incompetence and complacency at a quite heroic level. He admitted having chaired a meeting at which several people said that there had been discrepancies between the LIBOR rate and the rate at which banks had been paying for deposits on the interbank market. In his defence yesterday, he said he thought that some of those discrepancies might have been due to transactions intermediated through brokers, but he did not ask what the position was. He did not pursue it. He did not make an attempt to discover what the real facts were. That was astonishingly negligent, to put it mildly.
The other incident, the conversation that he had with Mr Diamond of Barclays, which has been so much in the public mind in the last week or so, also casts a strange light on his actions in carrying out his responsibilities in the Bank of England. He said that he was under great pressure at the time and that there was a great financial crisis, so much so that he was not able to make a note of even very important telephone conversations. I assume that the conversation was not a casual one, but that it was deliberate and designed to achieve a particular purpose. The only purpose that it could have achieved, and the only effect that it could have had, would have been to have persuaded or encouraged Barclays to understate the cost that it was paying for deposits on the interbank market. Clearly, Barclays could not do anything about the actual cost that it was paying. It would have been taking on deposits at as low an interest rate as possible. There have been some strange things going on. I have little confidence in the personality of the present deputy governor of the Bank responsible for financial stability.
There is a defence of his actions which noble Lords might have seen in yesterday’s Financial Times. It was the first letter in the paper, with the heading going something like “Tucker and Barclays saved the British financial system”. The argument was that it was correct in difficult circumstances, when banks were being squeezed on the interbank market or the interbank market was drying up, to give a false impression of what was going on by recording and publishing false LIBOR statistics. I do not accept that defence. First, it is not a defence that either Mr Diamond or Mr Tucker is making. Secondly, even if it were their defence it would be wrong. It is important that no financial stability organisation or anyone concerned with financial stability should be tempted to believe that by falsifying statistics in a difficult situation that is contributing to a solution. That risks undermining not merely the credibility of the index that you are falsifying, but every announcement and index. If the Bank of England was prepared to collude with a clearing bank to falsify the LIBOR statistics, the markets would immediately assume that collusion might take place if it was convenient in other circumstances, and that perhaps regulators and banks would collude to understate their provisions. As soon as that rumour or suggestion got about, there really would be a crisis.
That is a road down which no one should go. I do not accept that defence of Mr Tucker’s actions. It is not of course the defence that he has been making. He has no defence because he has confessed to an extraordinary act of negligence. Had he not undertaken it, had he not let that meeting go past—and yesterday there were suggestions that at the time he had other evidence that the LIBOR market was not as straight and transparent as it ought to have been—the crisis that we have experienced recently would not have occurred. I am sorry to have to make these harsh comments about a man whom I have not met and whom I had not heard until I listened to his evidence yesterday. However, in present circumstances, it seemed to me important that if one felt sufficiently strongly about such a matter one should raise it in the House.
Lord Myners
My Lords, I take note of my noble friend’s comments, but I feel compelled to say a few words in response. Without drawing the ire of the Minister, I can link it back to the subject of the amendment.
I worked with Mr Tucker, the deputy governor, during the banking crisis. We should wait for the outcome of the Treasury Select Committee’s report and the Joint Committee report. It is wrong to say that if the manipulation of the LIBOR-setting process had not occurred we would not have had the global financial crisis. It was undoubtedly bad and reprehensible, in the words of Mr Diamond, but it did not itself cause the crisis. Listening to Mr Tucker yesterday and reflecting back on the extraordinary circumstances of October 2007, I sympathised with him. The banking system was on the verge of complete collapse. It is still not fully appreciated how close we came to the edge of the cliff. In those circumstances, when one seemed constantly to be in meetings and constantly to be on the telephone, not taking notes of meetings is pretty forgivable. I was delighted that Mr Tucker was able to settle the issues arising from Mr Diamond’s file note about the senior Whitehall figures. I look forward to the Chancellor of the Exchequer responding to the clarity that Mr Tucker has brought there.
Reflecting on my noble friend’s amendment, I ask whether we are creating positions in the Bank of England and in the architecture which are simply beyond the talents of any one person to fulfil? Mr Tucker is one of the outstanding candidates to be the next governor. He is not the only one, but it is not a long list and it has got decidedly shorter in the past seven days. Two people previously spoken about as candidates, Mr Varley and the noble Lord, Lord Green, have probably dropped off in the past few days, so it is not a strong list.
Looking then at the FPC and its oversight, where are we going to find the people with the necessary talents to do this job? We are on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, you want knowledgeable people—people who do not have to be taken through everything step by step, but come to the issues with a good and clear knowledge and the ability to spot where the critical questions lie. On the other hand, you do not want to start these committees with people who in some way are conflicted by their current employment, their past employment, their pension arrangements and so forth.
I do not have a view about whether the shadow FPC is doing a good job. I think one or two of its members appear to be. Mr Robert Jenkins, in particular, appears to be an independent spirit who is not in any way caught up in the groupthink and consensus that I associate with much of the heart of the Bank. The simple fact is that most members of the FPC have a career background in investment banking. They have a career background in the very activity which was associated with the global financial crisis. I think we have a problem here. How do we get the right people into the right committees and the right courts and the offices of governor and deputy governor? No architecture makes sense if we are creating it on the presumption that we can find people of integrity, raw talent and understanding to fill the jobs when that is not a realistic assumption. I think the heart of the matter raised by my noble friend in his amendment is: how can we be satisfied that the people sitting on the FPC are appropriately competent and are managing conflicts of interests, as they probably will always have conflicts as a prerequisite for qualification to sit on these various committees?
Lord Liddle
My Lords, that was a very interesting exchange between my noble friends Lord Davies and Lord Myners on the crucial question of how these matters should operate. I would like to add a point in favour of my noble friend’s amendment on the basis of work I have done on how the new European system is operating. I had a conversation in Brussels recently with André Sapir, who is on the board of the European Systemic Risk Board, about the role of independent economic expertise in assessing systemic risk. On that board, the independent economists have made a decision that they will not rely on the internal expertise of the European Central Bank, precisely for the reason that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, said. We are operating in a very uncertain world and no one really knows what the right road map is. What we need is the maximum amount of well informed, independent expertise on these matters. I feel very strongly that this amendment should be supported.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, before I start on the amendment, I shall say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, that the deputy governor for financial stability is a very fine and highly respected deputy governor. As the noble Lord, Lord Myners, said, it is for the Treasury Select Committee to assess what he said yesterday.
Turning to Amendment 89, it would create an advisory panel with a two-fold brief: first, to advise the FPC on systemic risks to financial stability; and, secondly, to assess and report upon the effectiveness of the FPC in assessing systemic risks to financial stability, the macroprudential tools provided by the Treasury to the FPC and the actions taken by the FPC. The membership of the panel would include the deputy governor for financial stability and a number of external members appointed by the Treasury, drawn from a range of relevant professions, including academia.
The Bill already creates, in the FPC, a committee on which the deputy governor for financial stability sits, together with external members, some of whom may indeed be academics. The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, was good enough to compliment the external members of the interim FPC. Let me give some details of the specific expertise of the current external members to give a flavour. Alastair Clark has, in addition to extensive real-life experience, degrees from Cambridge and the LSE and is an honorary visiting professor at the Cass Business School. Robert Jenkins, who the noble Lord, Lord Myners, referred to, not only has extensive experience of trading and asset management but is also an adjunct professor at the London Business School. Donald Kohn, in addition to extensive experience in financial regulation in the US also has academic experience. Michael Cohrs has experience at senior level in the private sector in investment banking but is also a Harvard MBA and an adjunct professor at Beijing University. We want, and we have, multifaceted people. We agree with the noble Lord regarding the need for extensive broad experience, including academic experience, but we do not think this needs to be set down in legislation.
Lord Myners
The Minister used the word “independent” on several occasions relating to oversight. Noble Lords will remember that when the Monetary Policy Committee was established, there was quite a brouhaha about whether the independent members of that committee should have access to independent advice. The Bank resisted that so the independent members had to rely upon the Bank’s own economists. It was only after a threat of resignation by one of the independent members of the MPC that they were granted the ability to appoint, I believe, a single researcher.
The culture of the Bank does not foster independence. It is a very hierarchical organisation. The view of the Bank is the view of the governor. The court has recently announced three independent reviews into aspects of the Bank’s conduct. They are all quite interesting because they date from October 2008. None of them will actually look at the real errors that were made by the Bank, which were pre-2008. We really want to ask what the Bank was doing in 2006 and 2007. These reviews exclude any examination of Northern Rock, and I think one could argue that if it had been handled in a different way, it might have had some impact on how the UK was impacted by the global financial crisis.
I put down a Question on these independent reviews. The independent reviewers were appointed through a process led by the governor. The independent reviewers do not have their own secretariat. They are reliant upon the Bank’s staff for support, so I put it to the Minister that for this approach to operate, it is important that the FPC has access to truly independent advice. In my view, advice that comes from career employees of the Bank can never have that element of total independence that is necessary in order to achieve the objective that I believe the Government have for the FPC and which my noble friend has at heart when proposing this amendment.
Lord De Mauley
I will, if I may, respond on that point. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, is right, and my noble friend Lord Sassoon acknowledged earlier, that previously the Bank was slow to recognise the MPC external members’ need to have access to dedicated support. The Bank has learnt its lesson.
Lord Eatwell
Gosh, that is a bold statement. In replying to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, I would point out that he has overlooked two crucial elements that underpin the logic of this amendment. First, there are indeed highly skilled and independent members of the Financial Policy Committee, but they are involved in making the decisions and the recommendations. They are the organised part of the organisation which will in due course be responsible for what happens. They are not in any sense an evaluative mechanism. They are adding grist to the mill of a decision-making mechanism; an evaluative mechanism is a different thing altogether.
Secondly, the noble Lord referred to the role of the new oversight committee. I would remind Members of the Committee that the oversight committee will be composed of members of the court; it will not be anybody outwith the internal structure of the Bank. I am enormously disappointed—the most disappointed I have been with anything I have done in relation to this organisation—that the Government have not taken this on board. We are trying to formalise a continuous process of debate, review and assessment by people who have high levels of skill in this area but who are not otherwise involved. That is what a truly effective advisory panel should do. I was struck by my noble friend Lord Liddle’s comments on what is happening at the European Systemic Risk Board. As the noble Lord, Lord Stewartby, said, we want people with the right sort of skills doing this sort of assessment. He is absolutely right.
I ask the Government to think again on this issue. This area can contribute significantly to the overall success of the FPC. I assure the Government that I will return to this matter at later stages, but for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Sassoon
“( ) Within a year of commencement of this Act, the Bank of England shall publish a review of the effectiveness of coordination by the regulators of the exercise of their functions relating to membership of, and their relations with, the European Supervisory Authorities (namely, the European Banking Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority), and their relations with other regulatory bodies outside the United Kingdom.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, Amendment 96A stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Eatwell. Despite the increasing importance and powers of the new European Systemic Risk Board and its three ESAs—including, on occasion, the power to override our own regulators—the Bill’s new architecture does not map with theirs. So while Europe cuts by area—with a committee for banking, one for securities and markets and one for insurance and occupational pensions—the Bill divides between prudential and conduct. As AXA warns,
“There is a significant danger that the new structure will diminish the UK’s capacity to influence European regulators as”,
our,
“new ... bodies will be organised along different lines to the European Supervisory Authorities”.
London First, which represents over 200 of London’s leading employers, including many in the financial world, expresses similar concerns about the new framework not mapping onto that of Europe. While it welcomes the establishment of an international co-ordinating committee, it remains worried about the committee’s effectiveness unless it is appropriately resourced and staffed.
We have ceded powers to the EU on many areas of financial services regulation, but there are areas where we may want to retain powers; for example, to impose higher capital requirements on banks. There are also areas for future negotiation where it is imperative that we give leadership and have a good negotiating stance and team in order to have a good outcome. That depends on good preparation within domestic regulators—and that will require considerable co-ordination, which we will rely on a committee to produce.
Our own European Union Committee warned about the mismatch between our new structure and that of the ESAs last July, but the Government did not appear to take much heed of the potential problem. Perhaps the Government are right, and whichever way one cuts and divides, there will not be a brilliant fit. However, given the Government’s commitment to,
“ensuring that the UK authorities … take a leadership role in the ESAs”,
and given the importance of Europe in regulating, in standard setting and in influencing our financial regulators, it might be wise to have a built-in review to check whether we have got it as good as it could be, and to give this House and the other place a chance to see whether any adjustments are called for in the light of experience.
The Governor of the Bank of England has said that the new architecture is,
“a bit by way of an experiment”.
He went on to say that we,
“need to experiment and see how it evolves”
in regard to the whole schema, which he thought should be revisited after five years. In the case of our relations with the European bodies, however, we cannot wait that long. Decisions are being taken even as we meet.
These overlaps—or underlaps—are not theoretical. We know that Michel Barnier, the EU Commissioner overseeing financial services, is to amend EU market abuse rules in the light of the LIBOR scandal. Much of this work will overlap with the probe led by Martin Wheatley of the FCA which is examining almost the same issues. While the EU initiative is likely to complement Mr Wheatley’s conclusions on whether to apply criminal penalties to the manipulation of LIBOR or any other indices, there is potential for a clash over whether to regulate this or other indices.
Clear, focused input into EU thinking is therefore essential for the UK markets. We must ensure that we have the processes and structures right to make sure that those decisions suit our needs. This amendment seeks the information needed to help us assess what adjustments might have to be made to ensure that the decisions taken both here and in Europe really are as good as they can be. I beg to move.
Baroness Noakes
My Lords, I completely take the main thrust of the noble Baroness’s amendment, which is that the lack of mapping of our structure onto the European regulatory structure potentially creates problems. We have certainly heard from bodies in the City that they also are concerned that the particular issues that arise in their areas might not be well represented. There is a particular concern about the FCA and ESMA, given the FCA’s inevitable consumer centre-of-gravity and the perceived problem of issues relating to proper representation of the markets in Europe. So I completely buy the need to keep this under review. I question, however, whether the Bank of England is the right body to do that. If we need to hard-bake some kind of review process into the Bill, the review ought to be done by the Treasury, because it is the Treasury that could do something about it if it is not working well.
Lord Flight
My Lords, it strikes me that this amendment points an important finger at a number of territories. In some ways the mismatch concerns me less; there are always likely to be mismatch problems. For starters, I was disappointed that the previous Government, as it were, gave away power in the territory of financial regulation to Europe. Substantial things are happening: we have MiFID 2; the banking supervision proposals; and, following on from those, the recent proposals arising from greater European economic and financial union. First, I would like to know that the UK parties batting for the UK are doing a good job and have raised all the issues. Secondly, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. I am not certain whether this is a Treasury or a PRA matter but the PRA at least has the lead for the regulators in negotiating with the EU bodies. I should like to know how the Bank of England thinks it has done in dealing with the issues and protecting British interests.
The MiFID 2 proposals are coming up and I think that they could be extremely damaging to the UK if they went through as presently proposed. A lot of work needs to be done for them to be workable. If there were no public review or airing of what has been going on and the issues, it would perhaps be—in a fast-changing territory—somewhat undesirable. However, I am not quite sure what the right mechanism is for achieving what I seek to achieve.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend Lady Hayter’s amendment. She has drawn attention to a crucial issue for the United Kingdom. The fact is that we benefit greatly from the existence of the European single financial market. I believe that one of the reasons why so many overseas banks base themselves in London is that we are part of a single regulated market. There are grave dangers for us in going down the road of separating ourselves from that single market.
It is important that we keep very closely in touch with European developments at all times. It is a very fast-moving scene. As we understand the results of the last European Council, banking supervision within the eurozone will be put under the European Central Bank by the end of this year. I noted with interest the Governor’s comment, as reported in the Financial Times at any rate, that this would make it easier for the Bank of England to deal with regulatory issues because there would be, as it were, a single telephone number to ring in the European Central Bank. It is also the case that the UK has a critically important influence in the European Systemic Risk Board. It is vital that we play a crucial role in that board, of which the Governor of the Bank of England is the deputy chair.
Lord Liddle
Britain’s position is given a special status given that we are the financial centre of the European single market. The governors of the central banks who make up that body are alive to London’s concerns at all times. It is very important that we play a major role there. It is therefore crucial that we keep these issues under review. I do not think that the way in which the Government have handled the proposals for a banking union is in the UK national interest. It is a bit rich to say, “It is none of our business because this is to do with the eurozone”, but then to complain that the creation of this thing might mean that there was an inbuilt majority against Britain on all financial regulatory decision-making. It is rather contradictory.
The position we have to adopt is that although we are not in the eurozone and will not be in the eurozone, we have to sustain the single financial market. That involves us having the closest possible relationship with the relevant European bodies and keeping abreast, in terms of our own arrangements, with developments there. For those reasons, I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I also strongly support my noble friend’s amendment, which was very well conceived and—if I may say so—very persuasively moved. I also agree very much with my noble friend Lord Liddle in the way that he approaches this problem. I think that there are four major issues on which the House needs to ponder carefully. The first is the emerging mismatch between the evolving structures in financial regulation on both sides of the channel. Something has already been said about that so I will not go into it any further.
The second issue is subjective, but I fear that it is very difficult to deny. It is our declining influence in matters of financial regulation and supervision around the world. Many of us can remember a time when the British were regarded as great experts in these things. We obviously were brilliant because we had such a successful financial services industry. Therefore, when we said something about financial regulation, supervision or the right way of creating a framework for a thriving financial services industry, whether it was said in Washington, New York, Brussels or Frankfurt, it was listened to with great attention. We naturally had a very strong influence. I am sorry to say that a combination of the Euroscepticism of this new coalition Government and our recent failings in financial regulation and supervision—one thinks of the failings of the FSA in matters of RBS and so forth, and now the terrible and very upsetting scandal of LIBOR fixing, which I will not go into any further—inevitably will, and is, undermining the influence that we used to have. That is a very worrying situation.
There is, thirdly, the competitive issue, which we will come on to in later amendments. It is quite clear that as the framework for financial regulation diverges between this country and the continent, there is always a danger of competitive advantages changing, and possibly not in our favour. One of the obvious examples of which people are well aware is the possibility of lower capital-adequacy ratios on the continent. Presumably, particularly in the light of the crisis that we have all been through, they will always be set at a fairly sensible prudential level. However, there may be significant differences—for example, in retail deposit insurance schemes—which would lead people to want to hold their accounts on the continent rather than here. All kinds of things could emerge from regulatory and supervisory initiatives that would change the competitive balance. We need to be very alert to that.
Finally, the jury is out on whether or not it is in the national interest for us to be part of the emerging European banking union. I can see a great many theoretical reasons why it might be very strongly in our interest to join, but I do not have the slightest hope of persuading colleagues in the House today of that. Indeed, I am happy to wait and see, but we need to keep the matter under review. The regular review which my noble friend proposes in this amendment is exactly the kind of procedure and discipline that we want.
All British institutions involved should be aware that they are being reviewed in this matter; that their collaboration and effective participation in European structures is being watched; that they are expected to use their influence as effectively as they can on our behalf; and that they should be very conscious of the role they are playing. All that is very important and we need to monitor the results. We need, a few years after it comes, to be able to look back over the record as revealed by these reviews and otherwise—quite pragmatically and open-mindedly, without dogmatism or emotionalism—and to take a rational decision on the best way of achieving the national interest going forward.
Baroness Cohen of Pimlico
I support the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lady Hayter. Not only are we poorly mapped on to the new European financial regulators, but we are poorly represented in relation to our weight in financial services in Europe. We are under-represented, in fact. We are where we are, but this is one of the areas on which, in a year’s time, it would be useful to have a review and to see how best we might change or adjust our position, either by adjusting our own institutions, or by hoping to make greater progress in Europe. However, financial services are key to this country. Immense amounts of regulation being debated in Europe at the moment, and we are not quite in the best position to be doing all this. I very much welcome the idea of a review in a year.
Lord Neill of Bladen
My Lords, I have one comment to make on the text of the amendment. Just to have a report for one year seems such a limited objective. If it is worth doing at all, I do not understand why there is no language allowing for continuity. It was said that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, was providing for that. However, the actual language is:
“Within a year of commencement… the Bank of England shall publish a review”,
et cetera. It is to be a one-off. The idea is a good one. Have a regular review, and you can see whether things change. Whether it is going to be embarrassing for the governor, representing the Bank, to say what his relations are with all the other regulatory bodies outside the UK, I do not know. A case could be made for an independent body to produce this. However, the governor and the Bank probably have the information that is needed.
I add as a footnote that we need to keep in mind the terrible damage that has been done by the LIBOR scandal. There was an article in the Independent last week deploring the damage that it will do to the good name of the financial industry in this country. They are the sort of factors that are rather important.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, we have had an interesting run-around this issue. There have been quite a few divergent voices about the way of handling the challenge that is the subject of this amendment.
First, I certainly did not read this amendment as relating to the mapping of the UK structure as it will be against the European structure, because the start of this amendment talks about,
“a review of the effectiveness of coordination… and their relations with, the European Supervisory Authorities”.
This seems to go very much with the responsibilities under the co-ordination memorandum. I have a bit of trouble in my mind matching this up with the substantive concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, which I understand.
I start with the question as to whether the UK architecture does or should adequately map against the new European supervisory authorities. I do not believe it is necessary for the responsibilities of domestic regulators to exactly map on to the corresponding ESA for engagement with them to be effective and well co-ordinated. The regulatory systems of other EU member states do not match up with the activities-based structure of the ESAs. Of course, as has been discussed already, the European architecture is itself likely to be moving around, so that we are probably not going to be aiming at a fixed target. Although it has been stated that the City has had some concerns about the mapping, the broad consensus in the evidence given to the Joint Committee was that having a different regulatory structure to that of the ESAs, will not present any issues for the UK authorities in representing the UK’s interests. The Government have accepted the recommendation of the Joint Committee, and the Bill requires that the international organisations’ MOU establishes an international co-ordination committee, so we have fully responded to the concerns of the Joint Committee in this area.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
First, I thank those who have contributed to the debate and have spoken very much, I think, in support of what I have been saying. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, the noble Lords, Lord Flight and Lord Neill of Bladen, and my noble friends Lord Liddle, Lord Davies and Lady Cohen.
I am surprised that the Minister did not quite know what was coming. I said all this in my Second Reading speech, which I thought would be a little clue to what this was going to be about. However, I think that there is wide acceptance of the mismatch between the new architecture and what exists across the water. The Minister said that there were divergent voices. I do not agree. I think everyone is saying that we need to look at this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Flight, may be right that it would be better for Her Majesty’s Treasury to do it rather than the Bank of England, but that is quite a small point compared with the thrust of the amendment, which is that this matter needs to be reviewed.
This issue raises quite important questions, as I saw when I helped to regulate actuaries. Many of the rules were written down in Europe through CEIOPS, as it was called at the time. We did not have direct access to CEIOPS; we had to go to the FSA, which was our representative on it, and that made the negotiation much more difficult. Therefore, this is not an easy matter and it will be very important to review how the international co-ordination committee is coping, how effective our input is, whether what we are doing really is sustaining and enhancing the single financial market and whether we are properly, adequately and well represented on it.
The noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, may well be right that a regular review is needed. We proposed a one-off review because our domestic architecture is new and it may need some adjustment. However, the Minister is right: it is an EU moving target, so it may well be that a review will be required more often.
I hear what the Minister says about the NAO looking at this and the possibility of reviews by the Treasury Select Committee. However, it seems to me that the commitment to produce the evidence should come from the Treasury rather than the Bank of England, and any of those bodies could then take a view on the information. In particular, it needs to be automatically brought before Parliament so that this House and the other place are able to opine on whether adjustments should be made.
I am very happy to withdraw the amendment at this stage but I hope that we will be able to come back to this matter to look for an appropriate way of building in a review. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Sassoon
“(8A) After paragraph 12 insert—
“Publication of record of meetings12A (1) The Bank must publish a record of each meeting of the court—
(a) before the end of the period of 6 weeks beginning with the day of the meeting, or(b) if no meeting of the court is subsequently held during that period, before the end of the period of 2 weeks beginning with the day of the next meeting.(2) The record must specify any decisions taken at the meeting (including decisions to take no action) and must set out, in relation to each decision, a summary of the court’s deliberations.
(3) Sub-paragraphs (1) and (2) do not require the publication of information whose publication within the time required by sub-paragraph (1) would in the opinion of the court be against the public interest.
(4) Publication under this section is to be in such manner as the Bank thinks fit.””
“(8B) In paragraph 14(1), for “it” substitute “the Oversight Committee”.”
Baroness Kramer
“( ) In paragraph 13, for sub-paragraph (3)(a) substitute—
“(a) a director of the Bank to chair its meetings (“the chair of the Court”), and”.”
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I think that I can be very brief in moving this amendment. Its purpose is to close a gap between the Government’s clearly stated intent and the language in the Bill. I am sympathetic to those who have drafted the language, because the complexities of the Bank of England Act 1998, as amended by the Banking Act 2009, make it quite hard to follow through a single train of thought, and I suspect that that is what has caused a trip-up in the language in this instance.
On the first day in Committee on this Bill on 26 June, the Minister was absolutely clear that the oversight committee—whose existence and procedures he put forward and the Committee accepted—should be made up of non-executive members of the Court of the Bank of England, and that its chair should also be a non-executive member. However, the language in the Bill does not allow that train of thought to follow through. It would permit the Chancellor to appoint the governor or deputy governor to the role of chair of the court and hence see that individual put into the position of chair of the oversight committee. I shall not bore the Committee at this point by trying to track through that but I assure noble Lords that that is the consequence of the current language. I simply say to the Government that I hope that someone can go away and fix this more elegantly than I have been able to do and, on that basis, I shall not be pressing the amendment.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I do not know whether anyone else wants to come in on this but it may be helpful if I speak now. This amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Kramer returns us, as she says, to the territory of not only Bank of England governance but nomenclature, which we discussed at some length two weeks ago. As my noble friend says, one of the changes made in the Banking Act 2009 was intended to amend the Bank of England Act to require the court to be chaired by a director, which, as we established two weeks ago, means a non-executive member—again, as my noble friend pointed out. However, she has gone further because it is only my noble friend, with her razor-sharp eye, who has noticed that the relevant provision inserted into the Bank of England Act 1998, while allowing the court to be chaired by a director, does not require that it be so. That is clearly not correct.
Therefore, although I cannot accept the amendment as drafted because it does not cover all the necessary ground to give full effect to this change, I assure my noble friend and the Committee that we will go away and draft the necessary changes. I thank my noble friend for bringing this to the Committee’s attention.
More generally, I am aware from the discussion that we had two weeks ago that there are some irregularities in the terminology in the Bank of England Act which I certainly had difficulties with and I think that other Members of the Committee did too. A prime example of this is that the so-called Court of Directors includes the executive members of the court who are not, and cannot be, directors. This is plainly absurd. To say that this is all justified because the Bank has been in existence for 300 years so we just have to live with it is not the right approach. As I think I wrote following the first day in Committee, I will consider further whether any other changes might be made to the 1998 Act to clarify these terms, making them more consistent with current usage. We cannot proof the legislation against further changes over 300 years but we can at least try to update a few things.
With thanks to my noble friend, I ask her to withdraw her amendment, as she has already indicated she will do.
Lord Sassoon
“(b) for sub-paragraph (2) substitute—“(2) The terms and conditions on which a person holds office as a member of the Committee appointed under section 13(2)(c) are to be such as the Oversight Committee may determine.”, and(c) omit sub-paragraph (3).”
“(7A) In paragraph 9—
(a) in sub-paragraph (1)—(i) for “Bank” substitute “Oversight Committee”, and(ii) in paragraph (a), for “the Committee’s meetings” and “the Committee’s consent” substitute “meetings of the Monetary Policy Committee” and “that Committee’s consent”, and(b) omit sub-paragraph (2).”
Lord Sassoon
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, this is a large group of minor and technical government amendments that I hope we can dispatch very quickly. The amendments address a number of technical issues such as updating the Bill to accommodate changes in European law made since the Bill was introduced, amending some rogue references to the FSA in FiSMA, making consequential amendments to enactments that have been passed since the Bill was introduced and making other technical improvements. I am happy to discuss them, or write in more detail, if any Member of the Committee would like to discuss them. I beg to move.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I will just say that I am very happy to accept the assurances from the Minister that, first, these are technical amendments and, secondly, that he would be very brief in what he said today. I have tried to see whether I could speak for longer than he did. I have not been through every amendment but did look at a sample. Each one I sampled was, indeed, technical and minor.
Lord Sassoon
(d) a qualifying EU provision that is specified, or of a description specified, for the purposes of this subsection by the Treasury by order.”
Baroness Noakes
Baroness Noakes
My Lords, I am standing in again for the noble Lord, Lord McFall, in respect of the amendments that are in our joint names. In moving Amendment 101ZD, I shall speak also to Amendments 101B and 118B, which continue on from the concerns of the Treasury Select Committee in another place as expressed in its first report in this Session.
These amendments concern the FCA’s strategic objective, which was the subject of debate on our first day in Committee when, unfortunately, I was not able to be here. The effect of the amendments is to remove the strategic objective set out for the FCA and leave it with its so-called “operational objectives”. The FCA would then have simply objectives.
The FCA’s objectives have been amended quite considerably since they first saw the light of day in a draft nearly two years ago, but it seems to have been a case of two steps forward and one step back. The Treasury Select Committee believes that the Government should aim at simplicity and clarity when framing statutory objectives and that the existence of a separate strategic objective adds confusion. When the Government responded to the Treasury Select Committee’s earlier recommendation in this regard, they said both that the strategic objective,
“has a valuable role in supplementing the operational objectives”,
and that,
“it operates as a check and balance on the operational objectives”.
As the Treasury Select Committee has noted, that is rather contradictory and the Government appear confused. It is difficult to disagree with that conclusion.
The Government also said that the strategic objective acted as a mission statement for the FCA. The Minister repeated that two weeks ago when he responded to the group of amendments led by Amendment 42. The Treasury Select Committee’s view, as set out in paragraph 4 of the 28th report of the 2010-12 Session, is that:
“A ‘mission statement’ has no place in primary legislation. At best”,
it,
“adds nothing. It may be harmful. Multiple tiers of objective risk adding to complexity and diffusing the focus within the FCA”.
Under new Section 1A, the FCA has not only this mission statement-cum-strategic objective but also has three operational objectives, a requirement to promote competition in the interests of consumers, two “have regards” and four functions. As the Treasury Select Committee has pointed out, this really is not clear and simple. I might have understood why the Government had used this contorted formulation if it had been repeated for the PRA or the FPC. However, the Bill does not take this multiple-levels-of-objective route for those bodies, nor was it the route taken for the FSA under FiSMA. I regard it as an unusual formulation for bodies created by statute.
The Minister said last week that there were precedents for this framework but he did not cite them. Perhaps he will do so today so that we can judge whether they are good precedents. The noble Lord also did not explain why this formula is good for the FCA but not for the other bodies in the new financial stability universe. Again, perhaps he will do so today.
When the Minister replies, can he also explain what,
“so far as is reasonably possible”,
means in the opening words to new Section 1B(1)? Surely, the FCA should always act in accordance with its objectives, strategic or otherwise. What do the words mean? How could the FCA possibly act in a way that was not compatible with its objectives? I do not have a specific amendment on this point for Committee and the drafting of the Bill does not permit any sensible stand part debates, but I hope that the Minister can explain this when he responds. I beg to move.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, I have an amendment in this group of a slightly different variety but I have enormous sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has said about the strategic objective. When I first read the Bill, my note in the margin said “vacuous”. This notion that “relevant markets … function well” really is gamma minus stuff. It is pathetic and does not mean anything at all. One immediately asks for a definition of “function well”. We find that the objectives for competition, integrity and consumer protection are all defined, but there is no definition of what “function well” might mean.
Moreover, not only is this expression vacuous but it has no separate life. Whenever the FCA’s objectives are referred to in the Bill, it is the other objectives—the consumer objective, the integrity objective, the competition objective and the operational objectives—that are referred to. This strategic objective only has coherent life in other references in the Bill in so far as it lives through these more concrete proposals. If it is to be left as it is, it adds nothing other than spurious solidity and real complexity to the structure of objectives for the FCA. I have tried to give it some life. In our Amendment 101D in this group, my noble friend Lady Hayter and I have added the phrase,
“in the best interests of society as a whole”,
to the term “functions well”. That phrase captures the concept of the social optimum as defined in classical welfare economics. One does not want the technicalities of welfare economics within the definition of the Bill, but serving the best interests of society as a whole is the sort of expression that is used by Professor Amartya Sen in his discussions of evaluations of philosophical propositions relative to the social good. By adding,
“in the best interests of society as a whole”,
I would hope to provide this previously vacuous statement with some structure that could be referred to as a mission statement. Although I take on board the objections of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, to mission statements, I must say that I tend to agree with them. A mission statement could provide some framework within which the other operational objectives could be seen. For example, on the competition objective, one would look at the objective of stimulating competition in terms of the best interests of society as a whole. There may be circumstances in which the stimulation of competition is not in the best interests of society as a whole perhaps because it causes some distortion to the operation of the market, but, more generally, we would expect the encouragement of competition to act in the best interests of society as a whole.
We have a simple binary choice. Either we must give this vacuous statement some substance or we should remove it from the Bill, as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. What we should not do is leave this statement, which can do no good other than cause a bit of innocent amusement about how silly some clauses in the Bill might be.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I was not quick in getting to my feet because I am not sure whether Amendment 101D was moved, taken separately, or where we are.
Lord Sassoon
I wanted to be clear whether that amendment had been spoken to and on whether we should have something with substance in the provision or take it out all together.
It will not surprise the Committee if I say at the outset that, unlike my previous responses when I have been very accommodating or have tidied things up, I cannot support this group of amendments to delete the FCA’s strategic objective. The Government recognise the importance of getting the objectives of the FCA right. As my noble friend Lady Noakes said, there has now been a considerable period in which we have made substantial changes on the objective question since the first proposal, so we are, and have been, listening. It is perhaps worth going over where the suggestions for improvement have come from.
The Government took note of calls from the Independent Commission on Banking and others on the objective proposed in the draft Bill that,
“protecting and enhancing confidence in the UK’s financial system”,
needed to be changed. The Bill now provides that the FCA’s strategic objective, as has been noted, is,
“ensuring that the relevant markets function well”.
That change has been broadly welcomed, by the Independent Commission on Banking, and by consumer and industry stakeholders alike. Even the Treasury Committee considers that the revised drafting is,
“a significant improvement on the proposal in the draft Bill”,
as in its report of 31 May this year.
Let me attempt to reprise the argument, without delving into classical welfare economics and areas that are a bit beyond me. The Treasury Committee may assert that a mission statement has no place in primary legislation but the Government believe that it is right to enshrine something as important as the FCA’s overall purpose in primary legislation, whether or not we call it a mission statement. It is the FCA’s overall purpose.
Lord Eatwell
Will the noble Lord indulge me? What does function well mean? “Function well” for whom? Does it mean functioning well for a consumer? Does it mean functioning well for a trader? Does it mean functioning well in terms of working smoothly without any hiccups but not allocating resources terribly well? Does it mean allocating resources efficiently? All those things come under the term “function well” but contradict one another. What does it mean, and for whom?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, in giving those four examples the noble Lord knows very well that the first and fourth of his examples very much fit the bill, and the second and third very much do not. This is all about markets that work essentially to assist the end user of those markets. It has nothing within it to do with working well for a trader or something superficial that all looks smooth on the surface but does not provide the end result of liquidity, price discovery or choice for consumers. The noble Lord knows very well that it would be impossible within the compass of such a piece of legislation to try to define the well working of a market, but the Bill spells out the main ways in which the FCA will seek to promote the well functioning of markets—those operational objectives that I touched on.
Those operational objectives give clues and pointers to the FCA. It will be for the FCA’s board to consider if and when it needs to consider these questions of well functioning markets. I believe that it will be well equipped with its expertise to consider market by market what well functioning means. I see absolutely no problem with this. However, there needs to be something that brings together the FCA’s very diverse and individual functions, roles and responsibilities.
That relates to one of the questions asked by my noble friend Lady Noakes, who asked why the FPC and the PRA do not have strategic objectives. It is precisely because they have much more narrowly focused objectives that they do not need the overall strategic objectives that the FCA needs because of the breadth of its responsibilities. I agree with my noble friend and others that we have not provided this strategic objective for the FCA on some whim. We have not put it in for the FPC and the PRA because it is not necessary. It is precisely because of the diversity and the potentially conflicting nature of the objectives of the other bodies that we believe it is right to have it in the case of the FCA.
By the same logic, the strategic objective will act as a check and balance. If, say, the FCA seeks to advance its consumer protection objective by placing detailed requirements on firms, we want it always to ask itself whether what it is doing contributes to the ultimate end goal of ensuring that markets function well. What functioning well means will be determined with some commonality across all markets, but some of it will be market-specific, particularly depending on whether it is a consumer or a wholesale market. This is no afterthought. It reflects the Government’s desire to enshrine regulation which seeks to ensure that markets can do their job.
My noble friend also asked a question about how the FCA could act in a way that was not compatible with its objectives. There are examples which we need to take into account, one of which might be a short-selling ban which is, arguably, in the interests of end-consumers but is a measure which is not normally thought to be compatible with a well functioning market.
Baroness Noakes
I thank my noble friend for that example, in which a short-selling ban could be introduced because it was compatible with one of the operational objectives yet was incompatible with the strategic objective. What, then, is the point of having the strategic objective sitting in this Bill?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I have explained why a strategic objective is necessary in order to tie together the very disparate responsibilities of the FCA. Nevertheless, in answer to my noble friend’s question about the “in as far as reasonably possible” carve-out, I give her an example of why there will be circumstances where those words are necessary. It is entirely compatible with the need for the general, overarching statement to admit and allow for the possibility that there will occasionally be instances of conflict with that overarching objective. We have done that in the Bill and this does not in any way invalidate it.
I turn briefly to Amendment 101D in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. This seeks to extend the FCA’s strategic objective to ensure that markets function in the best interests of society as a whole. Consistent with what I have already said about the well functioning of markets, I support the sentiment underpinning the amendment. We want markets which serve the wider economy, underpin growth and contribute to a more prosperous society as a whole. We are not talking about markets that are working exclusively for those who are operating in them. This sentiment is very much part of what drives this whole programme of financial services reform.
Having said that, I am conscious about the amendment for two reasons. First, it is not the FCA’s job to decide what is ultimately in the best interests of society. The FCA is being set up as a focused, tough and proactive conduct-of-business regulator. If its new style of conduct regulation contributes to ensuring that the financial sector serves the wider economy, that is good and what we want to see. However, I suggest that deciding what benefits society as a whole cannot be the role of a financial services regulator.
Secondly, and linked to that, is an important question of expectations. The FCA will have some important powers but it is questionable whether we could argue that it has all the powers to deliver a market that benefits all of society all of the time.
There are difficult judgments to be made here, not least because there will always be trade-offs between policy choices. It is my strong belief that these societal choices are, ultimately, for the governor and not the regulator. I cannot, therefore, support Amendment 101D. I may be proved wrong in just a moment, but I sense that I have not completely won over my noble friend—no, I will not be proved wrong. However, she is always very reasonable about these things and she recognises the very considerable way that the Government have moved on the FCA’s strategic objective. I ask her to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Eatwell
Before the Minister sits down, did I hear him correctly when he said that the choice of the benefit to society as a whole was not a matter for the regulator but a matter for the governor? Or did he say Government? I did not quite hear him properly.
Lord Sassoon
I said the Government. I hope he would agree that it was for the Government, not the governor. Good.
Baroness Noakes
My Lords, I am glad that my noble friend has cleared that up because I heard him say “governor” too. Perhaps there was a small slip, but Hansard will doubtless make sure that what he intended to say is recorded as having been said.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, for his support for my amendments and I agree with him that the current drafting is not much more than a vacuous statement. The Minister said that this is going to be an overarching goal, that it is going to be a check and balance but the first example he gave me, of short-selling, means that it can be ignored. This seems to be some form of window dressing. It is trying to appear that the Government agree with as many people as possible. It probably has no meaning whatever and it is therefore possibly something that we do not need to get overexcited about. It certainly does not add to clarity in the Bill. I shall think further on what my noble friend has said before we return to this on Report. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.