Financial Services and Markets Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hoey and Lord Vaux of Harrowden

Report stage
Monday 7th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I am speaking on Report, I should remind the House of my interests as a shareholder in Fidelity National Information Services Inc, which provides services to the financial sector, and as a non-practising member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Pitt-Watson, to his new role, and I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood, because, when we discussed this clause in Committee, I jokingly referred to the Minister not always being the Minister, for which I apologise.

I have Amendment 9 in this group, which would remove the egregious Henry VIII power from Clause 3. I have also added my name to Amendment 10, which would delete Clause 3 altogether. As I explained in Committee, as someone who lives in a very rural area, my nearest bank branch, now that the last branch in my nearest town has closed, is a 100-mile round trip—so access to banking is a subject with which I have a lot of personal sympathy. I look forward to seeing the Lloyd report once it has been published in October. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, I expect to support an awful lot that will be in it.

The problem with Clause 3 is that it gives the Government incredibly broad and unfettered powers in this respect, including an unlimited power to amend any Act of Parliament. Indeed, there is nothing in the clause that would prevent a Government reducing access to banking if they chose to do so. I do not think I can put it any better than our Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its report of 17 June, which brought these wide powers to the House’s attention. It concluded that

“the problem with clause 3 is that it confers a wide regulation-making power on Ministers before any key policy decisions have been made, before any problem has been clearly identified and assisted by a power to amend any Act of Parliament ever made. Such a power severely compromises effective parliamentary scrutiny. We consider that the power in clause 3 is inappropriately wide and should be removed from the Bill”.

This Government have form on pushing through legislation before they know what they want to do with it, and this example is particularly egregious. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood, in Committee when he was the Minister, which Acts of Parliament the Government had in mind to alter using this power. The response, I am sorry to say, was less than illuminating. He said that

“the Treasury expects to use the power if needed to amend relevant legislation, for example, financial services legislation”.—[Official Report, 22/6/26; col. GC 232.]

He went on to say:

“As the recommendations of the independent Access to Banking Services review are currently unknown, it is necessary for Clause 3 to be able to amend primary legislation to respond to any recommendations that are made”.—[Official Report, 22/6/26; col. GC 235.]


In other words, “We don’t know what we want to do, so we’re just going to make it as wide as possible”. My guess is that it is actually highly unlikely that any primary legislation will need to be changed as a result of this, but we shall see.

I think that makes the case against Clause 3. It is not satisfactory for the Government to give themselves the widest of powers, including the unlimited power to change any existing Act of Parliament, when they have no idea what they want to do with those powers.

The Government claim, in the Explanatory Memorandum and elsewhere, that they will narrow the powers once the Lloyd report has been received. But this is Report. We have not seen the report. It will take I do not know how many months for the Government to come up with recommendations based on the report. The Bill will probably already be law by then, so there will be no real opportunity to narrow the powers.

I am sure that the House will support moves to improve access to banking when in due course the Government actually have a plan, and, in the unlikely event that changes are required to existing law, a short, focused Bill can be created to do that, which, as all changes to the law should be, can be subject to the proper scrutiny processes of Parliament. This unfocused clause is too wide and any resulting changes to law would not be subject to proper scrutiny. That is not the right way to legislate. At the very least, the Henry VIII clause should be removed, as I suggest in Amendment 9, but the clause as a whole is too wide, and therefore I urge all noble Lords to support Amendment 10 from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, to remove this unrestricted power.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to support Amendment 8, but no one seems to have spoken to it, so is it in order for me to say a few words on it? It is an important amendment because it contains really the only mention in the whole Bill of post offices. The amendment, in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Tyler and Lady Kramer, and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, talks about the Treasury considering

“the effectiveness of alternative frameworks, including the Post Office Banking Framework, in providing access to banking and cash services”.

That is an important aspect of all this.

Increasingly, we are seeing that people, particularly in rural areas or areas where there is high deprivation where people do not have access to online facilities and do not particularly want to go online because they do not trust banks enough to go online or they do not trust the internet, are using their post offices. The post offices could be doing so much more to widen access to cash and money.

I draw attention—although I am sure most noble Lords will have seen it—to the National Federation of SubPostmasters 18-page report on the access to banking services review, which shows statistically just how much more post offices are being used by people and how they could be used to provide even more services. When banks close in areas now, it is usually the post office that picks up a lot of that business.

I welcome the Minister to his position, and I hope he will say whether the Government are serious about increasing the use of post offices, not just for some of the issues to do with banking. You can no longer pay your television licence—if you still want to pay it—in the post office. So many services have been taken away from the post office, but such services would make it much easier and more accessible for people, particularly in rural communities. People trust their local post office. They find that it is somewhere they can go and get the advice and reassurance that they cannot get in a local bank because they do not ever see a bank. I have already mentioned the lack of trust.

I ask the Minister to respond to this amendment and say whether he is willing to talk directly to the National Federation of SubPostmasters to discuss these issues further and how we can make our post offices more vibrant and involved with the local community by being able to offer them the services that they want.