Financial Services and Markets Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Angela Eagle and Stephen Hammond

Committee stage
Thursday 3rd November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Dame Angela Eagle]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point: tech developments sometimes leave people behind. That is not usually deliberate; sometimes it is thoughtless. However, we in Parliament must ensure that all citizens in this country are able to participate in what is, increasingly, effectively a utility, even though it is not in public hands—I make no comment one way or the other about that. Being unable to access banking services for whatever reason is a real disadvantage, whatever an individual’s age or time of life.

That is a primary reason why we must ensure that what the market cannot provide, regulation provides. I am interested in what the Minister has to say about that. This issue will get bigger as more and more services go online. Regulation cannot happen merely at the end of a process, when access has completely disappeared. Even in some places where bank offices still exist, not everybody can access them. As a Parliament, we are people who point our regulators in particular directions to deal with emerging issues, and this is an important one. I look forward to what the Minister has to say.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I will make a short speech. It is more of a speech of curiosity. I listened very carefully to my next-door neighbour, the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden, who said what most members of the Committee would probably say. She will know as well as I do that everybody looks at my constituency and thinks “leafy Wimbledon suburbia”. But she will also know that parts of south Wimbledon, of Raynes Park and of Morden town centre, which we share, have exactly the problems that she spoke about.

I may have misheard the hon. Lady, but she said that she did not wish to compel banks to stay open, or did not think that we necessarily could do so, and she spoke therefore about the establishment of banking hubs. What I am curious about is how banking hubs would be established. Are we saying that, as part of getting or maintaining a banking licence, there should be a contribution to a social fund, so that banking hubs can be established around the country? Are we saying that that levy should be extended, particularly because some of the harm that we are talking about is the rise of online banking? Should online banks make a contribution to the cost of those banking hubs? Or are we saying—I think it was said that the hubs should be inside local authority areas—that local authorities should offer them, for instance in town centres?

That is a genuine point of curiosity. As in previous discussions with the hon. Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, for Wallasey, and for Mitcham and Morden—my next-door neighbour—there is huge sympathy for ensuring that our constituents, including vulnerable constituents, have access to banking services. But we need to more tightly define the practicality of how we ensure that they have that access.

Financial Services and Markets Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Angela Eagle and Stephen Hammond

Committee stage
Thursday 27th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Again, there is largely agreement about the aims of clauses 25 and 26. We are on the cusp of a complete transformation in the way our economies have to work. Sometimes, I think we do not quite understand the extent of the transformation that will be needed and the speed at which it will have to be done, given that we are so behind in our attempts to reach net zero and avoid catastrophic climate change. It really is the last few hours, in terms of the biodiversity and climate stability of the Earth, for us to be able to do this.

The scale of the required transformation is mind-boggling. Virtually every piece of infrastructure in existence in our society will have to be transformed. That will have to be done through public-private partnerships, investment to lead the market in areas where there is market failure and investment in innovation in financial services to help to provide that investment, but also through proper regulation, which is what these clauses are about. All those things have to be done in a timely way to create the circumstances for realising all the capital investment potential that will be needed to make this change happen, especially in established economies with old infrastructures, which are often the largest emitters of carbon, as it happens. All of that has to be done virtually in parallel, so that we can try to reach these important targets.

It is very important that, through these clauses, the Government have agreed to incorporate the legislative target of reaching net zero by 2050 into this part of financial services law. However, they have amended it by replacing what was there before—the “have regard to sustainable growth”—with the target. Is that the right way to go about it? By getting rid of that “have regard”, do we lose an opportunity to make progress, rather than just focusing on a future output? That is not a philosophical question; it is a practical one. Why have the Government decided to replace the “have regard”, rather than enhance it? Will the Minister reassure us that, in the context of having to retool the way we do almost everything in all our infrastructure, we could not have gone with both? Will there be the potential for people to think, “We’ll put everything off until closer to 2050,” because the “have regard” has been replaced with an end-date output target? Can the Minister justify why the Government thought that was the best approach?

When regulation is being refocused on net zero, there will be those who wish to greenwash what they are doing—I will use that phrase; the Minister understands what it means—in order to continue to attract investment and piggyback on the good will of people who wish this change to happen when, in the case of those companies, it is not happening. I suspect there is a little bit of that going on at the moment. How does the Minister envisage enforcement mechanisms and proper regulation being put in place to ensure that greenwashing is not going on everywhere? Such greenwashing would move us away from meeting the target. Not only would it be to the detriment of consumer interests; it would squeeze out more genuine activities, firms and investment if it were allowed to be too prevalent.

[Stephen Hammond]

I am not sure whether I am supposed to, Dame Maria, but I refer the Committee to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Like many Members, I welcome the thrust of clause 25 and think it is important that we are setting the principle of net zero in legislation. However, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire. Clause 26 amends FSMA 2000 in relation to the content of the annual report. I will not go through all the arguments that we may well make when my hon. Friend’s new clause is debated, but I want to register with the Minister my concern about the phrase “in its opinion”. There is a reputational risk for the regulator, as much as for anyone else, if someone were to examine it later. I will not detain the Committee any longer, but I will want to speak to this point quite extensively when my hon. Friend’s new clause comes up.

I ask the Minister to look at the phraseology and consider whether it is appropriate. As we have all said in Committee, during the evidence sessions and in widespread discussion of the Bill, the need for clear metrics, regulatory transparency and regulatory accountability is key. That is one of the things we have all welcomed in the Bill.