Financial Services Bill

Debate between Baroness Valentine and Baroness Kramer

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I appreciate the introduction to the topic from the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, and I hesitate to speak on behalf of all of my noble friends but I think we have become aware in this country and across the globe that shifting the balance of policy in favour of economic growth is a desirable target. Therefore, to use language, as he has, which downgrades that role in the way that it is approached by the Financial Policy Committee frankly strikes me as unfortunate. We are talking to some degree about semantics but we have learnt the hard lesson that promoting is more important than simply paying regard. He could argue that when his own party was in government it chose the wrong policy path and was pushing on a boom. But had it really examined that boom, it would have recognised that underneath it the fundamental necessary structures for economic growth were not being achieved.

We have all heard in a variety of other debates that manufacturing was declining steadily, certainly as a percentage of this country’s GDP and in comparison to competitive economies such as Germany. We know that there was an incredible overreliance on a banking sector that was reporting forced profits because we were hearing an inflated set of reports from the banks that were not based on a genuine economic boom. We know that underlying that whole period, youth unemployment was steadily growing even though it was masked by overall employment figures. We know that that particular boom was being fuelled by consumer debt that led to both intensive borrowing by individuals and therefore a lot of purchasing, which in a sense was a false contribution to the underlying economic growth, and also inflated house prices creating a house-price bubble. Requiring the new FPC to dig beneath what is actually happening in the economy, to recognise what is happening with the fundamentals of economic growth and then to give that a great deal of importance in the way that it shapes its policy is essential.

I am glad in many ways that the whole issue of economic growth does not have much in the way of party characteristics. I hesitate to quote from the BBA at this point but, like a curate’s egg, everybody has good stuff in parts and this is one of the good parts. It talks about the Chancellor’s commitment to an economic growth objective to stand beside the financial stability objective and says:

“This is to be welcomed as we have said on many occasions that there is a risk that insufficient weight will be placed upon the achievement of economic growth and jobs which must be the overarching objective. This we believe feeds through to ensuring that the FPC be set the symmetrical task of using its tools and powers not only to subdue demand at the top of the economic cycle”,

which is the issue of sustainable growth,

“but also to ensure that reserves are used in support of lending capacity at the bottom”.

That strikes me as very important. Mr Sants, before he stepped down from his role at the FSA, said:

“Changing the FPC’s remit is really important. The interaction between regulation and economic growth should be debated at the FPC”.

It seems to me that the language we have used frames that debate.

I wanted to take this opportunity to comment on part of the amendment in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Durham, because it contains within it one further element that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, at this particular point in time, has not addressed. That is the language that includes within the objective the promotion of,

“a stable and sustainable supply of finance to the economy”.

We see that as important enough to be worth integrating and highlighting. We should not simply assume that it will be part of an economic growth objective without a specific mention.

The reason we have done that is probably evident to many in your Lordships’ House. We have all shared frustrations over Project Merlin, quantitative easing and credit easing, and I fear we may have the same problem as we look at the consequences of the Government’s new “funding for lending” scheme. The Government, or the Bank, effectively push money into the system, which gets as far as the banks but does not emerge the other end. The second quarter report from the Federation of Small Businesses shows that demand for credit among its members was stable but that more small firms than ever were being rejected, with the rejection rate now reaching 41%.

The Bank of England’s credit conditions survey, for that same second quarter, shows that for small businesses, interest rate spreads actually widened, despite the Government’s loan guarantee scheme, which is meant to bring down interest rates for small businesses, and despite a sharp drop in default levels among them. Small businesses are demonstrating that they are less risky than they might have seemed historically, but are being rejected at a greater rate and also found that they were facing wider spreads on interest rates. We have to acknowledge at present that high street banks are the only distribution network of any size to get credit to those who need it on a small scale, but looking at the overall situation, we can easily recognise that the high street banks have many easier ways to generate a higher level of return than lending to small business.

There is a reason why, in our language, we have used the word funding and not just credit. The supply of finance is not just a debt issue but one of equity capital. Capital willing to take risks is hard to find. Angels are fewer than ever and venture capitalists are finding funds harder to raise. Indeed, long-term money of any kind is difficult to find at the moment, as I suspect the Government are finding as they try to look at ways to develop infrastructure projects. Some disintermediation of the banks is, if anything, aggravating the problem.

The UK differs from many other countries because it has very low retail investment in bonds and equities. Retail money is less volatile and tends to stick through the good times and the bad times. Germany is a good example, although there are many others, of a country where businesses, particularly small businesses, have been far less impacted because that retail sector, investing in both bonds and equities, is available to them.

There is another area where it is crucial that we have the attention of the FPC because the regulator can make a difference. We have a system now where the small end of the spectrum is very ill served—the small stockbroker, who often followed the small company, has largely gone. Most of the funding we have is simply fairweather funding. To change this, we have to develop a reliable funding supply. I understand that that is not for the regulator alone, but the regulator has a huge role to play if we are ever going to close those kinds of yawning gaps. This amendment puts it in a position to act. Some will say that there is already a competition objective in this Bill. There is a competition objective for the FCA, but it is very much designed to encourage a multiplicity of products—not to bring in new players or expand the scope of existing players, but to cover access to funding right across the business spectrum. Those are two very different things and we believe that we must capture that second aspect in the language that we use.

The FPC has to be engaged and to be part of making sure that there is capacity for funding the system across the whole spectrum, whether it be small, medium or large businesses. I would argue it also covers disadvantaged individuals and social enterprises, charities and other bodies which play a crucial role in our society today and will play bigger roles in the future. I suspect that other people will have much more to say about that, perhaps around this amendment and others. It is to push those underlying principles that we have put down Amendment 35.

[Baroness Valentine]

I am grateful to the Government for tabling Amendment 35A. This is a very important and conceptually challenging issue. I hope noble Lords will excuse me if I talk around the subject a little because, while it is certainly a step in the right direction, it is not at the moment clear to me whether, in legal terms, this amendment sets the right framework.

We should, perhaps, first consider that whatever framework we adopt must be flexible enough to operate effectively in three primary sets of economic conditions: first, the healthy state when one would expect the Financial Policy Committee to be scanning the horizon for future shocks at the same time as being conscious of any impact its actions might have on economic growth; secondly, crisis, where stability must be paramount; and, thirdly, the current state where uncertainty, principally from the eurozone, must be expected to continue for some time. This is, of course, a situation over which we have little control.

In the first and third of these scenarios, the issue at stake is the interplay between economic health and financial stability and the difficulty of balancing the two. There is a well-known saying:

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for”.

In this instance we can see absolute financial stability as a safe port but it would be ironic, given our island’s history as a trading nation, if the port were so secure that our businesses could not put to sea.

At a simple level, this is seen in the tension between capital ratios set by regulators and the demand that the banks increase lending, variously voiced by parts of the Government, some parts of the business lobby and the media. It is sometimes forgotten that the collective interests of the banks are, in fact, aligned with those of the Government in seeking economic health and financial stability, but both sides of the lending equation have curbed their appetite for risk. Just as banks are mindful of their own exposures, small businesses, because of economic conditions, will be both less robust to lend to and less keen to take on debt.

On this point, it is essential to have a common understanding between the Bank of England, BIS and the Treasury, and for the banks and the real economy to have the same understanding of where we sit on the risk spectrum. We also need the Government to be clear whether, and to what extent, they can or want to influence lending in the marketplace through initiatives such as the Business Growth Fund, the green investment bank or, indeed, their shareholdings in certain banks.

The amendment, as proposed, makes it clear that financial stability retains primacy. Some have argued that there is a logic to this because it mirrors the hierarchy of the Monitory Policy Committee’s objectives. The flaw in this argument is that the primary objective of the MPC is clear and measurable. Inflation is X%. Conversely, I know of no indicator as simple as inflation that would provide a proxy for financial stability. The primary objective of the FPC therefore requires judgment. We cannot state that financial stability is 23 whereas last month it was 27. So the point at which the secondary objective comes into play can remain for ever opaque.

I think this argues for one of two approaches: either tightening up the FPC objective to one which is measurable or leaving it as it is but then recognising that the interplay between the primary and secondary objective is necessarily different and therefore that the current drafting may not in fact be fit for purpose.

The challenge for the FPC is that it is unlikely that any Government will be prepared to state explicitly where the axis between stability and growth should sit. As we saw under the previous regulatory culture, the Government’s desire for risk-based regulation, under which banks could and would be allowed to fail, lasted only as long as it took for a bank actually to find itself on the brink of failure. Under the new regime, I suspect that Governments of all political persuasions will wish to champion both goals, leaving it to the FPC to judge how to offset the two. I believe, therefore, that we need a clear mechanism under which the FPC can demonstrate how it has achieved its primary objective while complying with the requirements placed on it by its second one and not hindering the Government’s economic strategy.