Procurement Act 2023

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Baroness Twycross

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I am happy to look into the point the noble Baroness raises. A new duty under the Procurement Act will require contracting authorities to have regard to small businesses, including ensuring 30-day payment terms on a broader range of contracts. We are keen to encourage more suppliers, particularly SMEs, to bid, which increases competition and should in turn support growth.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

On my noble friend’s point, I am not sure the Minister quite grasped the key issue, which is that if small businesses are required to make public their intellectual property and innovation—so that it then becomes available for much larger firms to take it over and use it without any payment—they are totally discouraged from putting forward their names for contracts to government.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I understood the point that was raised, but I did not have the answer. I apologise that I did not have the exact answer. I will go back and look into this, and I will make sure that I write to both noble Baronesses.

Infected Blood Inquiry

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Baroness Twycross

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. On the urgency of ensuring that those affected and infected receive compensation, it is difficult to talk about urgency when people have quite clearly waited decades, in some cases, to get justice. A lot of dialogue is going on at official level with the devolved Administrations, and this will be taking place at ministerial level as well. Applications for interim payments will start in October and it is a matter of absolute urgency that that goes smoothly. Those discussions will continue to take place over the summer, in advance of 24 August, when the “made affirmative” procedure will go through. It is vital that those continue to proceed. Applications for payments will open across the piece in October and the compensation scheme will be a priority for this Government. As I said, the Prime Minister made it a priority and reaffirmed this on his second day in office.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister raised the duty of candour as a mechanism to make sure that such horrors are not repeated, but will she take on board that a duty of candour alone is completely insufficient—the noble Earl, Lord Howe, raised this—so long as those who speak out become victims of retaliation? This is almost the norm, rather than the exception, despite the existence of employment tribunals, which are completely unfit for purpose in dealing with these situations. People will not speak out because they are not prepared to martyr their career, their family and their future. So will the Minister please support actions to provide proper protections for whistleblowers? Obviously, I have brought Bills before this House, but can that become a priority? Without that, a duty of candour is ineffective.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The duty of candour really matters. I appreciate that people are concerned about making sure that we protect public servants, which is right: we should protect them. But the duty of candour also relates to making sure that we have a culture within all our public services where, when things go wrong, people are able to say so and we do not have cover-up after cover-up. That is about not just whistleblowing but a culture that has protected the establishment and left people vulnerable and unprotected when they have been infected and affected by infected blood and infected blood products in this instance. Time and again when we have public inquiries, we see that people knew but did not speak out—and actually people have not always spoken out initially when there has been a formal public inquiry. So you cannot do that just by having a duty of candour within legislation; it has to be about the culture, which has to respect that, when whistleblowers speak out, they are protected. That is about not just legislation but the culture in which we want to operate our public services across the piece.

Financial Services and Markets Bill

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Baroness Twycross

Committee stage
Monday 6th February 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as London’s Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience, as risks associated with access to cash were noted as a risk to financial inclusion in the London City Resilience Strategy published in 2020.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for allowing me to add my name to their excellent Amendment 117 on financial inclusion. I will speak particularly on digital inclusion. The other signatories have already outlined in much better words than I could why this amendment is required. This amendment would ensure that the heart of this legislation takes account of the needs of the most vulnerable and that we have the opportunity to mitigate the risk that a significant minority of the population may be unwittingly left behind or excluded from crucial financial services. This amendment would be an important addition to the legislation. I agree with my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe that this is not party political. It is a really sensible and pragmatic measure which should afford significant protection.

On financial inclusion, I ask noble Lords to note specific issues of digital inclusion. This relates to financial inclusion as, without access to a smartphone or computer, it is almost impossible to carry out online banking or transfer money to a family member or a business.

I apologise for using a string of statistics, but beneath them there is a significant minority of the population whose stories and suffering because of financial exclusion often get missed. These people may be unable to access basic banking services online, relying heavily on cash or even cheques, and may struggle to pay for very basic things we all take for granted—for instance, automated parking.

Latest figures from the ONS estimated that, in January to February 2020, 96% of households in Great Britain had internet access. This increased from 93% the year before and 57% in 2006, when comparable records began. Although this number is increasing, and statistically it looks as if there is not a huge number of people without internet access, in the same period 76% of adults were using online banking. This leaves a significant minority who still do not. Estimates suggest that over 7 million adults in the UK—around 14%—could be classed as potentially financially excluded, with around 5.8 million having no record of an open or closed bank account. There are well over 600,000 people who could be classed as credit invisible, with the issues that causes for affordable credit.

Digital exclusion’s effects fall disproportionately, and research by the Centre for Social Justice has found that digital exclusion is significantly higher among those on the lowest incomes. It has a disproportionate impact on those who can least afford it. A fifth of adults with a household income below £15,000 are digitally excluded, compared to just 1% of those with an income of £50,000 or more. In turn, this adds to the poverty premium they already pay, as they cannot access the best prices or deals. This poverty premium, which has already been mentioned in this debate, includes borrowing and other financial services, so the proposed duty to be placed on the FCA would ensure that it, as well as the Government and the banking sector, can act to mitigate the risks posed by increasing digitalisation of the sector.

I note that technology often moves faster than we can imagine, Covid changed behaviours that now cannot be unchanged, and any duties imposed on the FCA in relation to financial exclusion will need to assume that the discussion about cash versus card that we are currently having will move to card versus phone, as well as include other technological approaches. Ensuring that the FCA has oversight over that would provide additional protection for the most vulnerable in our society, and I hope the Minister sees the merit of safeguarding which this amendment would provide and agree to include it in the Bill.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

I shall combine speaking as a winding speaker with addressing the amendment that sits in my name. I added my name to the two amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, Amendments 55 and 241. Like him, I am very conscious of many of the recent scandals we have seen—he mentioned London Capital & Finance, but there is also Blackmore Bond and mini-bonds, to mention just two of the most recent. They were fuelled by ordinary investors looking for improved returns. I would hope that with easier access to regulated markets, which typically come with information and analysis by independent entities such as the rating agencies, an investor would be far less likely to fall into unscrupulous hands. That is a consequence that neither the regulator nor the Government have been fully aware of. They are always surprised when an unscrupulous product appears, and they should not, given the general track record.

I also join the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, in their amendments to insert at least “have regard” for financial inclusion and for proper reporting on financial inclusion. I also support Amendment 67A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, to turn that into an objective.

My biggest gripe with the FCA on the financial inclusion agenda is that it is passive. If a new product or organisation were to come forward serving part or all of that community, it would of course appropriately regulate it. The problem is that it does not use its incredibly powerful and influential role as a regulator to spearhead the actual change—to pick up the words of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. It does not, for example, ask the competition to come up with a product or even look at mechanisms such as bank in a box, which is very popular across the globe. That makes it very easy for new entities to come to market, because the whole core regulatory piece comes off the shelf. That changes the dynamic dramatically. It does not take the initiative and, until it does, I can see that no one else will.

All of that in a sense leads me to my Amendment 228. Others have talked about the intractable problem of financial inclusion, and I suspect that many in this Room, like me, have been to round table after round table, meeting after meeting, conference after conference, with banks, credit unions, mutuals, fintechs and civil society groups to hear proposals for cracking the financial inclusion problem. Year after year, it is the same conversation, with relatively little headway. Others may correct me, but the number I have is that we still have 1.2 million people without a bank or credit union account, and in modern society that means that you simply cannot function.

I have huge respect for credit unions; I am delighted that there are amendments to support them and mutuals in the Bill. However, only 1.4 million people in the UK actually use them. That is a fraction of those who could benefit. Other forms of community development financial institutions are scattered, tend to be small and have limited scope. Local and community banks, as well as the old savings and loans, have largely been absorbed by the high street banks. In turn, as others have said, they have rapidly closed branches and anyway rely on a centralised system of decision-making that does little for local businesses or circumstances; we saw that graphically after the 2007 crash. There is a regional mutual bank movement—the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, addressed this in our debate on a previous set of amendments—that is trying to build, but the lack of capital is a major hurdle. Again, my noble friend Lady Tyler referred to the banking hub scheme driven by the access to cash task force, but it is growing exceedingly slowly.