Financial Services Bill

Lord Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Burns]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, that the Bank of England needs a modern and transparent form of governance, the best governance that it can have. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Flight, that the form of governance that is best known in this country and is best practice is a unitary board—a board that consists of a majority of non-executive directors. It also consists of executive directors with a non-executive chairman. The present structure of the court seems to me very close to that. We may not like its name, but in terms of structure, it seems it could very easily be turned into such a body. The issue is not what its name is or even the composition of it; it is to do with the powers that the court has.

It has been mentioned that the court has many of the powers that a normal board would be expected to have. Some of those powers that it does not practise at present are contained in the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, will move later today to do with dealing with issues of oversight of policy in the past and the extent to which that should be done.

I would hope that we could retain the present structure of the court. As I said, whether the name should be changed is a matter of taste, but we should concentrate on the powers of that court and the extent to which the powers that it needs to operate as a normal board are contained in some of the other amendments being put forward. Certainly, as I interpret some of those that we have seen already, it begins to come quite close to what I would expect to be a modern, transparent and very good form of governance.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, it has been an interesting 45 minutes. I really thought that this group of amendments was going to be, in cricketing terms, a loosener from the opening fast bowler from the Opposition Benches, instead of which I have been faced with a number of bouncers and, I dare say, a couple of wide balls on the way through.

I will not respond to all of what I might term the Second Reading points that have been reiterated. I answered all the substantive points at Second Reading and would refer noble Lords back to those debates. I also will not be tempted into discussing clauses yet to come. In answer to my noble friend Lord Eccles about what “micro” means—

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Looking at Amendments 5 and 10, when I was in the other place I had the privilege of being on the Treasury Select Committee for about six months under the outstanding chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord McFall. What struck me about it was that, like many committees in the other place and here, it was not party partisan in the way it operated. We sometimes see in the United States that it infects its confirmation process. Here, we have perhaps achieved the situation where committees understand their responsibility both to Parliament and to the community at large. Therefore, to deny the opportunity for a democratic part of the House to have a proper say in the appointment of a figure so critical and the opportunity to bring what are often years of direct experience and observation to that moment of final selection is a real loss. We have within this group of amendments a real opportunity to change the democratic profile and the confidence and accountability with which the governor operates. We should seize these opportunities in this Bill.

[Lord Burns]

My Lords, I support Amendment 6 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft. As she said, in terms of strengthening the power of the court or the board of directors, whatever we are going to call it, giving the appropriate powers, respect and position to the non-executive chairman of that court would be a very important part of making it an effective functioning body.

I was Permanent Secretary at the Treasury in 1993 when Eddie George was appointed governor and Rupert Pennant-Rea deputy governor without any warning being given to any of the members of the Court of the Bank of England. It caused a great deal of upset among members of the court who felt that they had been undermined by the lack of warning. In a world where we are trying to build some good corporate, modern, transparent governance, as we have heard today, giving a role to the chairman of the court, at least in terms of informing him or consulting him, would be an important part of it.

With respect to the amendments covering the powers of the Treasury Select Committee, my noble friend Lord Turnbull has set out the analysis of that position. It would be wrong to underestimate the power of the Treasury Committee simply in terms of its ability to summon people and to question them. I regard the Treasury Committee—I have watched it for many years and I appeared before it many times—as a very skilled body in terms of oversight. It fulfilled its role in terms of challenge, questioning and advice. I would rather it did the job that way rather than by seeking to have vetoes over positions. It can make a huge impact simply by the way it brings people in, talks to them, summarises its opinions and then leaves it in the hands of Ministers to decide how far they wish to take account of those views and whether they really want to push it. At the point at which they want to push it, the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, probably come into play.

I particularly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Peston. I cannot remember an occasion when the term of a Governor of the Bank of England was shortened other than by his own will. I would have thought that it would be an issue of some significance that would require not just the House of Commons but, as the noble Lord, Lord Peston, said, Parliament in general to agree it.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I also support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, for essentially the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and as part of the process of restoring the court to being a proper board.

I want to comment on Amendment 5. I have mixed views, but I think it is quite healthy that someone being appointed to such an important role should be subject to vetting in the same sort of way that occurs typically in the United States and that it probably is the Treasury Select Committee that is equipped to handle that vetting.

If I may digress, the present Governor of the Bank of England studied economics at the same university as me at the same time, and anyone that knew that knew that the teaching of economics at that time at that university was appallingly bad. That illustrates that it takes some effort to assess the sort of mind that someone being appointed to that job has got. The absence of any form of politically accountable examination is probably wrong in today’s world. Therefore Amendment 5 is worthy of serious consideration.

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[Baroness Drake]

My Lords, perhaps I might ask the Minister a very brief question. Proposed new Section 3E(2) says:

“The Oversight Committee must … if or to the extent that the Bank accepts the recommendations, monitor the implementation of the recommendations”.

My question is very simple. If the Bank does not accept the recommendations, what then happens?

[Lord Burns]

My Lords, I, too, support the burden of this amendment. It is a subject that a lot of us spoke about during Second Reading, and this is an important part of strengthening the governance of the Bank of England, which we have been speaking about for much of the afternoon. The things set out here have the ability, over time, to change quite substantially the relationship between the non-executives and the executives at the Bank. I think we all agree that that will provide a better balance, given the wide-ranging powers that the Bank of England will have. The proposed new section sets out some of the important issues about making reviews of policy performance, which lie at the heart of this, and the engagement of the non-executive directors in what has been happening from a policy perspective within the Bank. The suggestions about publication and handling recommendations would also be extremely helpful.

The very same question raised by the noble Lords, Lord Flight and Lord Hodgson, also came to my mind. Why does one need a separate oversight committee for this, rather than handling it within the board itself? I have sat on a lot of boards by now and I have never found a problem with engaging with this kind of activity. Within a unitary board, people know the occasions when they must remain silent or absent themselves and who is in a position to do that. It is very much about commissioning reviews, as set out here. It is not as if one is suggesting that the directors themselves would be conducting the reviews, but they are going to be commissioning them, either from inside or outside the Bank.

It seems to me that the only argument arises from the scepticism that we have heard from many noble Lords about the entrenched position of the executives relative to the non-executives of today. Therefore I understand why the Government might think that this is a way of bringing confidence to this process. However, over the long term, I hope that it could be done within the remit of the board as a whole, because that gives confidence within a unitary board; confidence between the executives and non-executives that, together, they can review what has happened in the past and can learn the lessons of the past so that an attitude of confrontation does not develop between one set of people reviewing the performance of another set. However, I understand why it might be right at this point.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Is the noble Lord not assuaged in his point about the unitary board by the fact that it explicitly says here that the oversight committee is a sub-committee of the court?

[Lord Burns]

The committee consists only of the non-executive directors; the executive directors will be there, in a sense, only in attendance. It can work. Normally within a board, if it was doing this kind of review, it would be the non-executive directors who were in the lead and making the running. I have found from experience that one should do everything one can to keep the executive and non-executive directors together when one is handling these kinds of issues and trying to learn lessons from the past. We do not want a situation where one part of the board feels that it is being picked on by another. However, given the level of distrust that we have heard this afternoon from many noble Lords about this, I can understand the concerns that, if the Government had brought forward the proposal in the sense that a number of us suggested, they would have come up against the pressure of saying, “Well, it will simply be controlled by the executive directors, in the end, if it is done that way”. Over time, however, a well functioning board should be able to handle these kinds of policy reviews within the whole of the board. That is the best way of learning longer term lessons from these experiences.

[Lord Tugendhat]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Burns, has just said. This is an admirable amendment, and I agree with almost all of it. There is one point I am going to raise in a moment, but I do not see why it cannot be done by the court. The fact that the Government have gone to all this trouble to set up a committee instead of leaving it in the court means that one wonders what lies behind it. It seems to be diminishing the authority of the court in some peculiar way. I do not understand the purpose; if the court consists of the directors of the Bank, it seems very odd. That is one point. Otherwise, however, I agree with the thrust of this amendment.

I would like to point out to the Minister an inconsistency in his approach. In a couple of the previous amendments that we have discussed, he told us that what is being suggested is unnecessary, because, of course, the Government would behave in a proper fashion. They would consult everybody, including the chairman. There is no need to be specific in saying that the chairman should be consulted on the appointment of the governor. There was another occasion when the Minister said that there was no need to be specific. Yet here the Government say,

“If the person to be appointed to conduct a performance review is an officer or employee of the Bank, the appointment requires the consent of the Governor of the Bank”.

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[Lord Sassoon]

I think that is wrong. It is not the Court of Directors that becomes the oversight committee; the Court of Directors remains the Court of Directors. It is effectively the committee of non-executive directors, or NEDCo, of the Bank, which becomes the oversight committee. The court remains the court. So there may be some misunderstanding of who is doing what here, but the Court of Directors must indeed keep the procedures of the FPC under review, which will be principally done through the oversight committee, which is a committee of the court.

[Lord Burns]

The references here to the Court of Directors of the Bank in new Section 9B(1) says:

“There is to be a sub-committee of the court of directors of the Bank”.

When it says Court of Directors in that case does it mean the whole court? Earlier we were being told that “directors” simply means the non-executive directors and that the governors are not counted as being directors of the court. That seems to be part of the problem that is causing this ambiguity.

[Lord Sassoon]

Let me try again. The court of the Bank, which is the executives and non-executives, must keep the procedures under review. The non-executives through the oversight committee have a remit and function that includes procedures but goes wider and is able to review the performance of the Bank and the FPC against its objectives in the full wide way that I believe the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, is asking for it to do—and I am confirming that it does.

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[Lord Burns]

For clarification, when it says the Court of Directors, does that mean the whole court or does it mean only the non-executives?

[Lord Sassoon]

Court means the whole court, and that is in relation to the procedures. The oversight committee has the function and ability to look not only at the procedures but also at the question of whether the objectives of the Bank and the FPC are being met.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I do not wish to upset the noble Lord, Lord McFall, or my noble friend Lord Flight, but I urge my noble friend to resist these amendments. If we look at the objectives of the Financial Policy Committee, it needs to be a pretty focused, pretty small body. Having 14 people, or 12 people, depending on which of those amendments one is addressing, seems not to lead to the operational focus and directness that this particular policy committee will need. Having four external members will give a perfectly adequate external perspective; more would be more likely to confuse than to illuminate.

[Lord Burns]

I argued at Second Reading that it would be very useful if we were able to get some balance between the way the MPC is formed and behaves and the way that this new FPC works. The MPC has existed on the basis of four internal members, four external members and the governor, which is a total of nine. The other important principle that has always been emphasised is that each member of the committee had to act as an individual. They were not there to behave as a collective body; indeed, we have often seen, in the case of the internal members of the Bank of England, that they have voted in different ways. I would see great merit in carrying over the principles of the MPC into the FPC, which is that there should be a governor plus equal members, excluding the governor, from inside the Bank and outside the Bank.

I have two questions to add. The first is, does the Minister understand that the arrangement will be the same as for the MPC, which is that the members of this committee are being asked to behave as individuals, and to have individual, rather than collective, responsibility? That is important. The second question is that, as I read this, there is scope for all three deputy governors to be on this committee. Will all three deputy governors be on the MPC? I cannot remember what happens. If that were the case, it would change the balance of the Monetary Policy Committee. The membership includes the chief executive of the FCA. I can quite see that he would wish to be present at the meeting, but it does not seem to me that he needs to be a voting member of the FPC, given that his responsibilities are somewhat distant from the FPC’s main tasks.

My main point is about individual accountability as far as the people are concerned, not an expectation that the internal members would be acting as a group. As far as possible, we should hold some kind of symmetry between how the MPC and the FPC are set up, otherwise I can see that, over time, there would be constant pressure, with one saying, “Well, the other one is set up in a different way—shouldn’t we move to that?”.