Official Listing of Securities, Prospectus and Transparency (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

Distinguished lawyers.

[The Earl of Kinnoull]

Yes, I am sorry, we have now decided that they are distinguished lawyers—and others of the huge number of advisory people in London who help people get access to capital. There were a lot of notes in November and more in December, and what is interesting is that they have all been positive on this SI. So I am not sure what a full consultation would have produced in excess of the current SI. Anyway, that is what we have, and I very much hope that it too will sail through shortly.

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[Lord Bates]

This is a separate debate. The noble Lord is moving his amendment, expressing regret from your Lordships’ House that there has been no consultation with industry on this measure. That is what his amendment says, as my noble friend Lord Bridges pointed out. I am not trying to raise the temperature to the same level as perhaps existed earlier in the Chamber; I am trying to maintain it at a level where we are focusing on the legitimate scrutiny which the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, are applying to this process. My noble friend Lord Bridges talked about UK Finance; I was about to quote TheCityUK.

[Baroness Kramer]

I thank the Minister but he is rapidly losing me. Had the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, not raised it just now, I would not have known that we are about to give approval for the issuance in the UK of Venezuelan sovereign bonds. That may not have been of particular interest to TheCityUK or UK Finance because of the way in which they look at the world, but I suggest that, had we had a 12-week public consultation, somebody would have come in with that information, which might have been of great interest to this House and created some pressure on government to re-examine that provision and clause. While industry bodies are crucial, there are many other stakeholders with an interest which by necessity have apparently been excluded from this process so far. Underscoring their importance is the issue in front of us today.

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[Lord Bates]

To allow the House to make progress on this, I will seek some advice on that point.

[Baroness Kramer]

Is there any hope that there might be some in-flight information on this? I had understood, from listening to this debate, that this is not a rollover of the current rules; it is a way to make the rules more palatable—presumably to many of the Brexit community—by saying, “We will recognise that EEA state organisations do not have to use prospectuses, but don’t worry, we’re not treating them as special, we’re now going to allow it for every other country, even if they don’t have equivalence”. That is a policy shift. All I am saying is that a consultation would surely have surfaced that issue and the Government would have dealt with it in a different way.