Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Desai and Lord Deighton

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading; I was out of the country. I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Eatwell. As many noble Lords said, ring-fencing will be a new experience. However, given what happened in the banking industry, and the damage it caused, we have to start the process with extreme care and great suspicion. Given time, I know that the banks will innovate ways of avoiding ring-fencing; that is the nature of the market in innovation. Therefore, before anything further happens, we ought to have early scrutiny of ring-fencing arrangements, as proposed by my noble friend. Later, if we wish, we may do the next review after four or five years, but the initial reviews must be done as early as possible and as toughly as possible, because if we are kind to the banking sector and it does the same thing again, the public will never forgive us.

[Lord Deighton]

My Lords, there have been a number of comments on the length and complexity of the Bill. I am not here to apologise for the Bill, but I know that my officials in the Treasury have worked extraordinarily hard to try to make sense of it and to deliver comprehensive briefs as quickly as the timetable allowed. Therefore, I hope that noble Lords will bear with us as we work our way through this complex process.

At the heart of this group of amendments is the question of the nature of the review and what it is trying to accomplish. The critical point that I want to clarify is that under the Bill the PRA will review the workings of the ring-fence: how well the rules achieve the ring-fence’s objectives and how far the banks are complying. The PRA is not being asked to judge whether the ring-fence is the right policy.

As the Chancellor emphasised in his evidence to the PCBS, the Government have no objection in principle to independent reviews. Indeed, as the House knows well, the ring-fence has its origins in the recommendations of an independent review: that of the Independent Commission on Banking. As I stated, the Bill provides for regular reviews of the operation of the ring-fence. Clause 6 provides for the PRA’s annual report to Parliament to cover the extent of banks’ compliance with the ring-fence—a provision that Amendment 42 will strengthen, as I will discuss in a moment.

Subsection (3) of new Section 142J requires the PRA to carry out a review of ring-fencing rules every five years to assess how well the rules are framed in order to achieve the objectives set for the PRA in the legislation. Should the PRA identify areas where the rules need to be changed, it will have the power—indeed, the responsibility—to do so. Regular reviews of how the mechanics of the ring-fence are working are legitimate and necessary, so it is right that the Bill already provides for them.

On Amendment 42, in response to arguments made in the Commons, we are strengthening the requirement of the PRA to report each year on banks’ compliance with the ring-fence. Amendment 42 requires the PRA to report annually to Parliament on how ring-fenced bodies have used any exemptions to excluded activities or prohibitions. As noble Lords will know, the Bill allows the Government to create exemptions from the exclusion or prohibition of certain activities, as long as the exemptions are not likely to threaten the continuous provision of core services—that is, retail deposit-taking. These exemptions are necessary to allow ring-fenced banks to enter into derivative contracts to manage their own risks. The Government also intend to use this power to permit ring-fenced banks to sell simple derivatives to their customers, subject to safeguards to ensure that this does not expose ring-fenced banks to excessive risks or undermine their resolvability.

It is right that any such exemptions should be closely monitored. We have therefore agreed with the suggestion from the Opposition, who in the other place advocated that the regulator should report on the sale of simple derivatives by ring-fenced banks. However, our amendment goes further, requiring the PRA to report on ring-fenced banks’ use of all exemptions created now or in the future. These will include exposures of ring-fenced banks to financial institutions incurred for the purposes of risk management, providing payment services or trade finance services, as well as the sale of simple derivatives. This amendment will ensure that Parliament has sufficient information to make an informed judgment about whether the ring-fence fulfils its objectives and the exemptions remain fit for purpose.

On the other amendments, it is far less clear to us that we should legislate for repeated reviews of the whole policy. Amendment 3 would effectively reconvene the ICB in perpetuity to ask afresh every few years whether we should continue with the ring-fence at all. I have two main objections to this. First, one of the original aims of establishing the ICB was to secure consensus and certainty over the future of the banking industry in this country. The Chancellor has memorably described how, before this Government took office, he heard four different proposals from the then Prime Minister, Chancellor, Governor of the Bank of England and chairman of the regulator. The ICB process brought together all these voices and others to produce recommendations, including for ring-fencing, that commanded wide consensus support. That consensus gave the industry certainty over the future regulatory framework, which is so important to enable businesses to plan and invest. Reopening that consensus every five years, or indeed even earlier, would undermine that certainty.

If I have learnt one thing in my relatively short period in the Treasury as Commercial Secretary, it is that the one consistent request I get from businesses in every industry is, “Please provide us with a stable and certain framework so that we can plan and invest so as to sustain this recovery”. As I have implied here, shortening the gap between reviews—as Amendments 4 and 5 would do—would add further to the uncertainty. I also question whether it would even be possible for a review to judge after only two years whether ring-fencing was working. Given the scale of the changes involved, any verdict arrived at before ring-fencing has had more time to bed down would surely be premature.

My second objection is to this amendment’s prescription that the terms of reference for these repeated reviews must include considering the case for full separation. This seems rather like requiring that reviews continue until they come up with the right answer. I do not believe that that is appropriate. Given this, I also see no case for delaying the commencement of the Government’s provisions for a firm-specific power of separation until after a review, as Amendment 116 would require.

I turn now to the proposal in Amendments 10 and 14. So that noble Lords are clear, this is quite a different issue. It is for an external review to form part of the procedure for the firm-specific power to require separation. It is the electrification power. As noble Lords will know, the Government have accepted the case for a firm-specific separation power, and we will shortly debate the government amendments designed to make the separation of power already in the Bill more credible and effective. That is what I promised when we first discussed this Bill. However, the Government do not understand the possible justification for an external review to form part of this power. The PCBS proposed this as a safeguard for banks against arbitrary or unreasonable actions by the regulator, but the right of appeal to the tribunal already protects against this possibility. The tribunal, of course, is independent, so an additional safeguard is unnecessary.

Further, an external review could also serve to undermine the electrification process. The PCBS argued powerfully that regulators should not be subject to self-serving lobbying by banks. An external review could easily become an opportunity for banks to lobby during the electrification process to seek to persuade the reviewer that the regulator was acting unreasonably or treating them unfairly. Any bank required to restructure will have a right of appeal at the end of the process, so why give it another opportunity to challenge the regulator? I am also concerned that, even if the bank’s lobbying efforts did not succeed in blocking a requirement to restructure, they could serve to delay it and slow down the process for the regulator to require separation. This seems contrary to the objective, shared by both the PCBS and the Government, of making the electrification process less lengthy and cumbersome. For these reasons, I cannot agree to these proposals, and I call on the noble Lord to withdraw them.