Financial Services and Markets Bill

Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Grand Committee

To that end, I ask my noble friend to respond to all the points in those amendments and, ideally, accept them in Committee to save me having to resubmit them on Report.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)]

My Lords, there are many good suggestions in this group of amendments. Indeed, they are all good and they are all very supportable. It is particular pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, because with the amendment on the determination of authorisations he has put his finger on a specific problem that interferes with the day-to-day running of businesses, or those hoping to run new businesses, and is at the heart of competitiveness. So without addressing those kinds of issues, we will not get anywhere. This lies behind similar amendments in my name, in a later group, relating to efficiency.

I hope that, given the number of amendments, and no doubt contributions, from noble Lords from all sides, the Government and the regulators will acknowledge the need and the parliamentary appetite for further accountability through formal reporting and, as I point out in my Amendment 121, for independent performance metrics. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, for signing that amendment. Of course, it is a probing amendment directed at the FCA. To be thorough, there would need to be another one replicating it for the PRA, but I had tabled enough amendments already. I am conscious also that the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, has proposed a more fully developed model, with an amendment in a later group creating an office for financial regulatory accountability. I have signed that amendment.

My amendment suggests that the FCA report its performance against a set of statistics developed and periodically updated by the National Audit Office, in consultation with consumer representatives, through which the FCA’s achievements and progress may be objectively evaluated. The idea for the amendment developed out of discussions that we had in your Lordships’ Industry and Regulators Committee when we were looking at competitiveness in financial services, particularly in the insurance sector, as well as the wider discussion about competitiveness.

The issue with reports by the regulators is that, even within a given topic, they are setting their own exam questions and then grading themselves on how well they have passed. There is a constant need to get different specifics and granularities as new issues arise, and that is not necessarily being done—for example, reporting on authorisations, as I have mentioned. The committee had some discussions with the NAO, finding it very helpful and astute, and there are always lots of interesting things in its report that at times already challenge what the regulators have said about themselves and how they have spent their resources. It sheds light on things that—shall we say?—have certainly been exaggerated by the regulators in the past.

It is clear from the number of amendments in this group and elsewhere that to address problems comprehensively within the structure of FSMA is quite difficult and convoluted, needing many amendments that make it ever more difficult and convoluted. That is one reason to have an external body that can look over everything and cut through some of the obfuscation and difficulty one has in trying to put something comprehensive into FSMA and needing about eight amendments to do it. My fundamental question is: does the Minister recognise that need for an independent body of substance that can update what is reviewed and measured around regulatory performance and is free from the regulators’ own glossing, and if not, why not?

I need touch only briefly on my other two amendments in this group, Amendments 157 and 158. They simply suggest that when respondents to consultations do not wish to be named—that is perfectly reasonable—there should nevertheless be an indication of the nature of the respondents so that we can see how many have come from industry and how many from elsewhere. That is done sometimes; it is done routinely in some departments but in others it is never done. It is just good governance because, without revealing the identity of individuals or companies, you can nevertheless see what the universe of respondents truly looks like.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 83 and 84 in this group and I have added my name to Amendments 66, 115 and 116 in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond. I did not add my name to some of the other amendments in this group but I think a pattern of considerable agreement is emerging from all parts of this Committee as to the things that we need to address. Perhaps we have not quite honed in on how to find the one solution to that, but the purpose of Committee is to explore these things.

My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond’s Amendment 66 aims at much the same target as Amendments 45 and 63 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I support what both said in introducing their amendments. I understand what the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, is seeking to achieve but it is not enough just to tell the FCA or the PRA to monitor and measure what they are doing in certain areas. We need to go further, and into regular and focused reporting, which is why I particularly wanted to support my noble friend Lord Holmes’s Amendment 66. Of course, the two issues are not mutually exclusive, and I can see the start of a way forward to an amendment on Report that encapsulates many of the issues arising in respect of the competitiveness and growth objectives.

I am particularly concerned that the regulators will pay lip service to the new objective: we will get pages of elegant words in their annual reports but whether they will amount to anything useful in terms of information is something of a moot point. I also believe that relatively few people actually read the annual reports of the regulators, much as not many people read the annual reports of listed companies. If noble Lords are in any doubt about the capacity of the PRA to write a lot of words without saying much of substance, they need only look at the PRA’s discussion document on how it will respond to this new competitiveness and growth objective. It runs to 70 pages but there is virtually no meat in there at all. We need hard data in a regular report which will get attention in Parliament and elsewhere, which is the other main theme that will emerge from our Committee: how we can start to build a proper system of accountability. However, reporting by the regulators is an important building block in there.

My Amendments 83 and 84 also concern the competitiveness and growth objective, but this time in the context of consultation on new rules. These amendments amend new Sections 138I and 138J of FSMA, as inserted by Clause 29, so that the PRA and the FCA have to include an explanation of the impact of how the competitiveness and growth objective has affected whatever new rules are brought forward. Whenever new rules are proposed, there is an important opportunity to consider their potential impacts on competitiveness and growth. As we know, regulators do not need many excuses to create new rules, but every time they respond to real or perceived risks with another addition to the rule book, they will end up imposing costs, and costs are ultimately borne by consumers. They can also have the effect of slowing down or hampering innovation, so it is important that, at the point before new rules are introduced, we have the opportunity to review the impact of those rules on competitiveness and growth in the UK. I like ex poste reporting, but I also like ex ante analysis and, if necessary, action to change rules before they have an adverse impact.

I have also added my name to my noble friend Lord Holmes’s Amendments 115 and 116 because they would give hard data on how speedy the regulators are in handling new approvals, which is an important area. Amendment 116, which would require information on various kinds of regulatory decisions made by the FCA, could usefully be extended to the PRA because it, too, seems to drag its feet on those areas.

Anybody who has worked in a bank will have a story about how long it took to get directors and key executives approved. Last week the Financial Times reported that a digital asset technology company was forced to register in Switzerland because the FCA was too slow to deal with its UK authorisation application. We really must have regulators in the financial services sector that work efficiently and effectively if the UK is to remain a successful financial centre. We need the kind of reports covered in these amendments to form part of a suite of information on which Parliament can start to hold these regulators to account more effectively.

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[The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Penn) (Con)]

My Lords, there is a large number of amendments to cover in this debate, so I aim to be succinct. While these amendments cover a range of issues, they all relate to reporting requirements on the regulators to enable effective scrutiny and oversight of their work.

First, on Amendments 45 and 63, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and Amendment 66, in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes, the Government agree that it is vital to have appropriate public metrics to ensure that the operationally independent regulators can be held to account for all aspects of their performance, including against their new growth and competitiveness objectives. FSMA establishes multiple channels for this, including annual reports. The regulators also voluntarily publish a range of data—for example, on operating service metrics. Specifically, Clause 26 will require the FCA and the PRA to report on their performance against the new growth and competitiveness objective, as part of their annual reports. That sets out for my noble friend Lord Bridges the existing reporting done by the regulators—but the Government recognised the need to go further in requiring the regulators to publish information, which is why we added Clause 37. It provides an additional mechanism for the Treasury to require the regulators to publish information, including performance data, on a more regular basis, where the Treasury considers it necessary to support scrutiny of performance.

The broad approach is that FSMA requires the regulators to report on how they have discharged their functions and that the decisions on publishing operational metrics are appropriate for the operationally independent regulators to determine, working with government, where appropriate. It is impossible to predict how the power in Clause 37 requiring regulators to publish information on a more regular basis may be used, but I reassure noble Lords that the Treasury will work with stakeholders, industry, consumers and Parliament to understand the evidence base for whether it is in the public interest to exercise this power and the kinds of situations in which it would be desirable to do so. That power also includes a number of safeguards to ensure that it is exercised appropriately.

However, locking specific, detailed metrics into primary legislation would result in a static framework unable to adapt and respond to wider changes, and impose fixed requirements which may not be possible or appropriate for the regulators to report on. Clause 37 provides a more flexible—and therefore future-proofed—mechanism for ensuring appropriate scrutiny. Similarly, Amendment 121, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, seeks to impose a requirement to report against metrics determined by the National Audit Office, along with consumer representative bodies. Again, embedding this in primary legislation would not be the most effective approach. The NAO is already able to examine and report on the value for money of spending by public bodies, including the FCA and the PRA, and it reports its findings to Parliament. The Government consider that the setting of specific reporting requirements for these bodies goes beyond the scope of the NAO’s remit.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)]

May I interrupt the Minister? The whole point of my amendment—whether it be the NAO or otherwise—was specifically to address the fact that the criteria might need to be changed, so it would not be a fixed list but would develop depending on circumstances. Perhaps the Minister does not think that the NAO is the body, but the question I posed was about this in general. There is a difference between it being an independent body and it being the Government. Given all the other powers that the Government have to direct the regulators, it could look like a conflict of interest if it is not done with a greater degree of independence. The fact that the Minister said that Clause 37 needs to be used with discretion seemed to recognise that that potential tension and conflict might be wrong. Would it not be better to have an independent body involved?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for teeing me up to answer the question that she posed at the end of her remarks. I understand her point about trying to have a more flexible framework of criteria and the NAO being one idea for an independent organisation that can do that. She will know that the Government considered this as part of the future regulatory framework review and found that there are substantial practical costs and resourcing obstacles to overcome in making such a body operationally effective. Such a body would also duplicate existing accountability structures and potentially undermine the regulators’ operational independence.

In considering that question, the Government concluded that the existing avenues for stakeholders to provide input, feedback and challenge through public consultation are appropriate, supported by strengthening the statutory panels, independent challenge and cost-benefit analysis.

In addition, the Treasury and Parliament will continue to assess the work of the regulators in their oversight role, strengthened by a number of the measures in the Bill. That position was supported by the TSC report The Future Framework for Regulation of Financial Services, which said:

“The creation of a new … body … would not remove the responsibility of this Committee to hold”


the FCA and the PRA

“to account, and it would also add a further body to”

the regime that Parliament would need to scrutinise. The Government therefore concluded that the Treasury, as the department responsible for financial services policy, is best placed to assess whether, as a backstop, further reporting is required by the regulators and to direct them to publish this if necessary and appropriate.

I fully appreciate that the Committee will want to continue to explore this question in discussing these amendments and further amendments as we reach them, but I think it is helpful to set out that the Government considered this question as part of their consultation and work in the development of the Bill. Careful thought has been given to it. We have been open to making improvements: indeed, I believe Clause 37 was an improvement made when the Bill was in the House of Commons, so we are open to further thoughts, having already given this quite a lot of consideration.

Turning to Amendments 83 and 84, I hope I can reassure my noble friend Lady Noakes that Sections 138I and 138J of FSMA already require the FCA and the PRA to provide an explanation of how their draft rules advance their objectives as part of their public consultations. The Government’s policy intention is that this requirement extends to the new secondary objectives. However, I thank my noble friend for raising this issue. We will consider whether the legislation could be made clearer on this point before Report.

I move to Amendments 113 and 114, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. The Government recognise that the Bill represents significant reform, and it will be important to provide an assessment of its effects on the system. However, we think it would be inappropriate to task the regulator with this assessment. In line with Cabinet Office guidance, within three to five years of Royal Assent, the Government will submit a memorandum to the Treasury Select Committee with a preliminary assessment of the impact of the Act in practice, to allow the committee to decide whether it wishes to conduct further post-legislative scrutiny.

Turning to Amendments 115, 116 and 196, tabled by my noble friend Lord Holmes, I am aware that the speed and effectiveness with which the regulators process applications for authorisation and other regulatory approvals remains an area of concern for both Parliament and industry, and the Committee has reflected that to me again today. I welcome the report published by TheCityUK last week about this important issue and, just as importantly, the constructive way in which the regulators have engaged with that feedback from the sector.

The Government share these concerns. In December, the Economic Secretary wrote to the CEOs of the PRA and the FCA setting out the importance of ensuring that the UK has world-leading levels of regulatory operational effectiveness. In their replies, both CEOs committed to publishing more detailed performance data on authorisation processes on a quarterly basis going forward. The FCA, in particular, has an extensive programme of activity under way to improve the timeliness of its approvals. It recruited almost 100 new authorisation staff in the last financial year, streamlined its decision-making processes and is digitising its application forms to make the process smoother for firms. The power in Clause 37, which I mentioned earlier, for the Treasury to require additional reporting from the regulators could be used to hold the regulators to account on the important issue of authorisations raised by these amendments, but, as I say, there is a commitment by the regulators to publish more detailed quarterly information on this matter. However, the Government will continue to engage in discussions with the regulators on continuing to improve operational efficiency.

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[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I will make three brief observations. First, in this context, we are looking at the mandate that we are giving the regulator. One obviously could look at rules by some ex ante supervision, but that is not how this will work. Leaving it all to accountability after the horse has bolted is not the right way to proceed. It is very important that we give attention to the scope of the mandate.

Secondly, there is an obvious illustration as to the scope of the mandate in the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes: proportionality. I would be astounded if anyone disagreed with that proposition, because only a fool would argue that you should make disproportionate legislation.

It seems to me that, in looking at this, we ought to know how the people given the mandate by Parliament intend to operate. Do they intend to produce consistent and predictable rules? I would imagine that they do intend to. They may agree with many of these objectives, but it is very important for the Committee to know the Government’s view of the form of regulation—the mandate—before we decide on what should happen. We also need to know how they are going to do it, because you always ask your agent how they will do something. If we were informed, there might be much less dispute.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 70 in this group, which was also referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who supported and signed it. It would insert a regulatory principle of efficiency that the PRA and FCA must ensure that their supervisory and approval interactions are efficient from the perspective of the regulated entities and in comparison with regulators in comparable countries. Clearly, it overlaps with some of the issues that we have already discussed, but it gets to the heart of the matter as to how and for whom the regulators are thinking, and whether they recognise what their impact is.

My Amendment 122 establishes that a corresponding report is required, which must include how they have undertaken this efficiency comparison, including the periodicity of the comparison and its outcome.

Amendment 144 is another go at inserting the same principle into the bank’s supervisory roles. It will not have escaped the notice of those who have read all the amendments that a similar amendment also appears in other places and formats, in part as a response to the layering of objectives to make sure that they actually happen. The point is really to find the best place for this, not to keep repeating it, but I had several bites at the cherry.

As I said, the substance of my amendment has already been discussed in the previous group, but I wanted to bring out the perspective point. The regulator itself might be very efficient at the expense of the industry it regulates—for example, by using the same template letter at the start of institutional approval processes, without any regard for proportionality or without saying anything useful about what might already have been presented at an extensive, exploratory, preliminary meeting. I recognise the traps that the regulators are trying not to fall into, but this has to be looked at from the other side.

As I said before, when the Industry and Regulators Committee was looking at competitiveness, there was a constantly repeated complaint from industry about delays over routine approval matters, including staff appointments, which caused delay and costs in day-to-day matters. These issues keep coming up, both in real life and in the amendments from noble Lords from around the House, including from the Government’s side. I therefore hope that the Minister and Government will help us to address them as we proceed on the Bill. It is obviously a matter to which we will return on Report, probably in more than one way. Therefore, some preliminary discussions with the Minister would be very useful.

I must also comment on the proposals from the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. If you look at all his amendments, you will see that he is also a victim of the need to insert the same thing all over the place in FSMA in order to make it happen—and I appreciate that there are bigger and more developed amendments to come. My concern is whether the amendments achieve the objectives they set out to. I see the attractiveness of predictability, but I think that some of the concepts underlying these kinds of amendment are about reintroducing thinking in the regulator and in industry. By having layer on layer of complex rules, starting at the top, drilling down, then making the next one slightly different and providing lots of tick boxes, you can get certainty. But everybody says they want principles. I thought the idea was to have principles and then to discover that, if you did not take some reasonable precautions, there may be some regulatory actions against you. I have had these kinds of conversations with some of the authors of these proposals.

This almost goes back to where it used to be, when there was unlimited liability, but you took a little more care, because you might be for the high jump. You had to think about what you would do and consider the harm, instead of looking at a set of rules, against which you could put a little compliance tick that took away the thought and judgment that should be going into what you are doing in such an important industry. This cannot be tick-box. I fear that this is driving in the same direction. If I heard correctly, even the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, talked about these broad principles needing more detail underneath.

These amendments do not solve what some of those who have spoken in this group have told me that they want them to solve. I fear that this will be static rather than agile, yet after Brexit we keep saying that we want our regulators to be agile to new things and able to adjust. One cannot be both agile and wholly predictable, because you have to respond to new circumstances.

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On Monday, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, strongly supported the inclusion of a climate and nature objective, but she opposes the inclusion of the competitiveness and growth objective. If the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, had their way, it would certainly deliver a double whammy to the financial services industry. The exclusion of the competitiveness objective and the inclusion of the noble Baroness’s preferred objective would have a negative effect on growth, leading to reduced investment in new and cleaner energy and infrastructure projects and, perversely, making the Government’s net-zero targets even harder to attain.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)]

My Lords, I have several amendments in this group. Amendment 48, which has already been referred to, seeks to add “sustainability” in as a sort of foil to the international aspect. Amendments 49 and 59 seek to remove the bits in brackets relating specifically to financial services, which is more of a comprehension issue. Amendments 51 and 60 propose another placing of the efficiency amendment in case it might sit better within the competitiveness and growth objective.

There is another very dangerous thing going on here, on which I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes—we agree more often than people would think. To some extent I support her Amendment 47, as I will explain later.

As has already been said, my Amendment 48 seeks to add in “sustainability” so that the competitiveness and growth objective would be “subject to sustainability and aligning with relevant international standards”. We have been talking about the need for balance and I felt that that, potentially, was a balance that we wanted. That also seemed a suitable place in which to write sustainability into the Bill. Perhaps we could choose other words, because I meant it to cover sustainability in financial terms and in a humanitarian and environmental context, too. I am not clear that some of the things which are said to be covered actually are covered.

When we were talking about position limits, I believe that the Minister said that taking humanitarian matters into account was something that the FCA could do. I cannot see anywhere among its objectives or anywhere else where that comes about. I can see that there can be market integrity things on position limits, but not whether you want to think about whether you are causing people to starve. There are things that we expect to be taken into consideration—it is not a subliminal matter, but just by implication—but they are not there if you look for the words. From experience of looking at things when they have gone pear-shaped and the regulators want an excuse, it seems to me that they will be asking where it says those things.

Returning to the competitiveness and growth objective, the more I look at it, the less I like it, not from the point of view of the competitiveness and growth bit but for all the other drafting around it. This is where I agree: what on earth is this “subject to international standards” doing there?” It gets sprinkled around quite liberally in legislation. When I was an MEP, I learned very soon after I got to Brussels that the Treasury wanted “alignment with international standards” put liberally into EU legislation as a way to try to cut down EU degrees of freedom. Now, here we are, post-Brexit, trying the same trick on ourselves and handing it to unelected bodies. Much as I did not object to the EU system, we are where we are. I do not think it is right. If we think recently in terms of LDI and so on, we hear the Bank of England saying, “Until we have the international rules on non-bank financial institutions, we have not done anything”, when something that is a complete viper’s nest is going on that is completely within everything to do with the United Kingdom. That shows us—we will come to this later on with some of my financial stability amendments—that it is looking for support and to hugger-mugger together with the rest of the regulatory organisations rather than putting the UK first and thinking clearly about what we want.

Are we now trying to control the regulators as we tried to tie the EU? We do not need it to control the regulators because they largely control what goes into the international standards, and those international standards have far less parliamentary scrutiny than anything done by UK regulators for the UK. I accept that the Treasury has a seat at the table and therefore knows what is going on, but it is very difficult to scrutinise what goes on at Basel and the other international organisations. You can get our regulators to explain what they agree with and claim victories where they put things in, but to get any explanation in time to be able to react to it and to influence it is extremely difficult. I tried this while I was chair of ECON in the European Parliament when we were doing the capital requirement rules. We forced one or two meetings with them, but they did not really want to know, and we are going to be in even more difficulty trying to follow those kinds of things within the UK’s parliamentary system.

Here we are signing up blind to something rather than signing up after scrutiny. That is what happens in other countries, notably the EU and the US, which have a whole system, including parliamentary procedure, to determine whether they are going to sign up to the international rules.

There is nothing wrong with political statements being made which say that the broad expectation is for us to be in alignment with the international standards, but I do not see what that does without any kind of caveat around it within primary legislation. It makes a mockery of us trying to scrutinise anything when we know that what we will be getting is just what the regulators have decided with other regulators, at a different level over the UK’s head.

As I mentioned on the last group, I also put my amendments on efficiency here, so I will not go into those again. We can discuss among ourselves where they fit best.

My final point relates to the words in brackets, which I address in my Amendments 49 and 59. Simply, when I read this part of the Bill, it did not read as if the financial services references were in there because that was the bit that the regulators were empowered to do; I thought that it was possible to make it read as if some kind of preference could be given to financial services over and above other things. I know that that is not the intention, so my only objection to these words is to ask whether the Government are absolutely sure that they read properly. I am not suspicious of the motives but, if one of my assistants had written this back in my patent attorney days, I would have been thinking that it was not quite right and asking if we could rephrase it. So there is nothing more suspicious to it than that.

I do not think that those words are actually needed because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said, they can only influence financial services. Financial services must serve the economy and must serve other businesses. So you could, theoretically, enhance the economy within financial services by putting up all your charges to the rest of industry. One hopes that competitiveness and competition laws would stop that from happening, but you could have that interpretation. Somebody might be able to hang something on those words if they are still there.

That explains my amendments. I do not think there is anything too untoward; I would be interested to hear from the Minister about international standards. I accept that we have them in other pieces of legislation, but if we have got it wrong somewhere else, we do not need to keep repeating it.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I speak briefly to give full-throated support to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes. This tying to international standards seems odd, at best, for at least two reasons: first, this is attached to the competitiveness objective and not run through all objectives, not least the primary objectives; and, secondly, this objective, even before it has been launched, is fettered and shackled through this connection to international standards and the ISSBs that they are under. That seems curious, in that it seems to run counter to the espoused purpose and intention of the Bill. I would be very keen to hear my noble friend the Minister’s comments when she comes to sum up on those points.

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[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, which has turned out to be a rather more interesting one than I thought we might have on this subject. It has raised a lot of very interesting points. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, challenged us on why we do not keep referring back to the financial crisis. There is a very simple reason: we are in a different world now. As we know, financial regulation was overhauled both in the UK and internationally. The banks have far more capital but, more importantly, significant changes have been made to ensure that they can fail safely. We are not talking about carrying the inherent risks which came to fulfilment in the early part of this century. Constantly harking back without recognising the huge changes that have happened since then is just not helpful.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for explaining which standards are intended to be covered by this. That is a helpful statement to have on the record. However, I confess that, while I completely accept the notion that we will want generally to comply with international standards—we lead them quite a lot of the time—as far as I can tell, the regulators spend at least half their lives on airplanes to exotic parts of the world to have meetings about international standards. I am not sure that that is a very good use of their time.

It could be that we do not wish to follow particular standards, even though being in a leadership position would imply that we would generally do so. It continues to trouble me that the wording says

“subject to aligning with relevant international standards”,

as if we align with them automatically, not merely as our default position. I am not entirely convinced that my noble friend has explained to my satisfaction that this wording gives sufficient flexibility to allow international standards to be ignored when relevant to the UK. I completely accept that whether or not international standards are followed will be primarily determined by our regulators, in the light of what is necessary. I may well want to revisit this on Report but, for this evening—which has gone on for rather a long time—I beg leave to withdraw.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, I mentioned that I wrestled with this in the EU. There it says “having regard to”, which I would have thought was the appropriate wording: we have regard to it and usually do it, but do not have it in binding language.

Amendment 47 withdrawn.