Financial Services and Markets Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords I rise because this amendment allows me to do two things that I do not do very often. One is to thank the Minister because the amendments that she has brought forward are constructive, as others have described. The second is to say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan: finally, a benefit from Brexit. One down, which pleases me, I have to say.

I want to ask the Minister if, in the course of the review, she will look at the industry that has mushroomed from the vetting of PEPs. I dealt with the American Express problem that others have described. I filled in my forms and still have my card—I am afraid that the BA miles win me over. I decided that I would open a savings account at Chase Bank as they were offering some good rates but discovered that I was caught up in this PEP process and the bank asked for a raft of information that, frankly, I should have never been asked for. The breaking point was a phone call asking me for payslips for my husband. On his death, I had inherited from him and therefore the bank wanted historical payslips. My husband died 17 years ago and I do not know how many people still have their payslips from 17 years ago, never mind those of a dead spouse.

To me, that was typical of the overstepping and exaggeration—gold-plating is almost an understatement —that has been going on in this process. It caused me to go on to the web and discover that there is a raft of consultants, advisers and legal entities that have become engaged in this process and taken straightforward guidelines from the FCA and blown them up into something extraordinary and complex. I am furious with the FCA because it does not enforce the guidelines; I hope the Minister will convey that and that the Government will become furious with the FCA for not enforcing its own guidelines. I hope that she will also encourage it to use the review to look at the vast industry that has burgeoned and makes its profits from making life an absolute misery for anybody it can catch in the system.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I should like to add to this because I have had enough trouble with the PEPs issue for a long time. First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for explaining an important point about why I can get no information from Northern Trust on administering an investment trust in which my wife owned shares in Ireland. We had to get probity in Ireland, but the trust will still not release the money and will not say why. I am getting an absolute blind spot. Even Barclays, which wants money over here to pay off something does not seem to be getting any joy. I suspect that it is because the trust is not allowed to tell us that we are under investigation. That is wrong. If there is a problem, we could unlock it if the trust could just say, “We are trying to investigate this because we think we have to”.

I personally find it offensive that I am deemed to be a risk and a crook. I thought that in this country we were innocent until proven guilty. Actually, this is the other way around. Just because I happen to be a Member of the House of Lords, it is assumed that I am corrupt. This has caused a lot of problems for me and my family, but I am not going any further into detail. We have heard good stories from others, but I do not understand why we are PEPs. I have no access to government contracts and there is no reason to bribe me, sadly. I do not understand the logic behind that, and something should be done. The classification of PEPs should be looked at and revised because a lot of other people who are not PEPs are in places handling government contracts. As far as I know, they are not under permanent scrutiny, so I think you have got the wrong people and it is a nightmare.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, mentioned the Crown dependencies. I want to ask my noble friend on the Front Bench about the position of the British Overseas Territories.

Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I know that noble Lords are looking forward to hearing the Statement, but this is an important point. I certainly would not be able to add anything to what the most reverend Primate has said in a very powerful speech. I am glad that he liked my analogy about wallpaper and walls. I have to say to my noble friend the Minister that the writing is on the wall here, and it is absolutely clear that if we do not have in this Bill a clear provision that gives the Government power to deal with the sector as a whole, most banks will decide to go with the culture and try to make it work. But they are in competition with each other; one will come up with a clever scheme and the others will say, “They’re getting away with this—we ought to do the same, or we will do some variation of the same thing”. You need there to be a threat to the whole sector, if some of them fall by the wayside. That is another argument, in addition to the ones made by my noble friend Lord Lawson and by the most reverend Primate.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will think about this very carefully and see the writing on the wall. He will find it very difficult to get this Bill through this House without a provision of this kind being incorporated in it.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I make a simple observation from experience. I have seen this attempt at ring-fencing in the past. When you have ring-fenced or non-ring-fenced entities—it does not matter which—reporting up to a group head, at the end of the day that group head can manipulate things at an investment level or at all sorts of other levels to influence the outcome in a way that is unexpected. It does not work, the moment that you have a group, because that is outside the ring-fence. I could give noble Lords instances, but it might cause problems if you did. I would rather say that I totally support the most reverend Primate and this amendment, which is very sensible.

Financial Services Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I will intervene only for a moment but in case the Government are unable to meet the hopes of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, and others today perhaps I might say that I chair the sub-panel of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards which is looking at competition in retail banking. Account portability is a significant part of that and the staff are now on the alert to take the report of the comments made today in Hansard and make sure that it and the amendments are put before the panel’s next meeting

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, this is a very sensible amendment and it should be accepted. I also agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that it ought to be applied to all accounts. We have had to leave some family accounts open just to receive some old shares and such things coming in because we cannot really get around to changing them. If we could change them at the bank end, it would make a lot of sense.