Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Phillips of Sudbury

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I must advise the House that if Amendment 84 is agreed to, I shall be unable to call Amendments 85 to 87 for reasons of pre-emption.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on the 18 amendments in this group and I am the sole signatory on eight of them. I endorse entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, said. He speaks from great experience, which is of great help to the House.

One of the scandals—I think one can fairly use that word—of the past five years in terms of financial failings has been the extreme paucity of prosecutions for some of the greatest criminal failings, to use a neutral word, in the history of our or any country. It is rather staggering to think that over the past five years you can count on the fingers of your two hands the number of City malefactors who have been prosecuted, when during that time probably 20,000 or 30,000 people have been prosecuted for shoplifting at an average of £25 a time.

I tabled these amendments not in any spirit of vindictiveness—one can also say that, I am sure, of the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, and the other signatories—but to try to give real teeth to a very important clause, Clause 27, which is designed and put forward on the basis that it will be a significant deterrent to conduct arising in the future which is comparable to the conduct that has occurred in the past five or six years. The wording of Clause 27(1) in particular seems to those of us who have tabled these amendments to be so narrow—to cite the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Brennan—that the prospects of getting a conviction before a jury, or, indeed, starting to prosecute at all, will be remote. To give a simple, direct example of that point, Clause 27(1)(b) makes plain that a conviction can be secured only if the implementation of a single decision—“the decision”—causes,

“the failure of the group bank”.

When, except in the rarest of circumstances, did a single decision cause the failure of a bank? Life is much more complicated. Very often a series of decisions is involved and even then you cannot say that the decision or decisions cause the failure but rather that they,

“contribute directly and significantly to”,

the failure of a group bank, as I have put it in my amendment.

We have tabled these amendments to give practical effect to Clause 27 and other clauses. They are important clauses and we must not shackle them with such a narrow set of requirements that they will not serve their purpose. We should never forget that British criminal law is rightly strictly construed, and construed against the prosecution. If you think of that and you think of the wording in the clause, you will realise that it is not fit for purpose. I hope that if my noble friend the Minister does not accept the wording of these amendments—they could be drafted differently—he will at least undertake to come back at Third Reading with wording that the Government find acceptable and which will serve the purpose that we seek to serve in putting these amendments forward.

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Phillips of Sudbury

Monday 1st November 2010 Grand Committee

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Of course, to higher and greater things. It is notorious in our system that Ministers remain in post for less than two years, and that one Minister does not feel bound by the statements of another. If anyone doubts that, I can give them half a dozen chapters and verses now. Therefore, the soft soap, even from the mouth of as distinguished a Minister as the noble Baroness, is not enough where one is dealing with issues of citizens’ basic rights. For this side of the House, and no less for Members opposite, the destruction of the national identity register is a crucial matter. If ever there was a situation where somebody beyond the Minister is needed to give reassurance that what has to be done has been properly done, this is it.

Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause requires the independent person appointed to review the arrangements to make an annual report of his or her findings not just to the Secretary of State but also contemporaneously to Parliament. That ensures that the absence of specifics in the proposed new clause is adequate, because any independent reviewer, because they know that they have to report to Parliament as well as to the Secretary of State, will be on their mettle.

I finish by saying that this deals in the Bill with a number of anxieties expressed by the Joint Committee on Human Rights when it reported in October. For example, it stated that,

“the Government should report to Parliament on the progress towards the destruction of this information and the decommissioning of the NIR”.

It says that “the Government” should report. However, as I have attempted to justify, it should go a step further. The committee made other recommendations, particularly with regard to Clause 10, which entitles the Secretary of State to require verification information from not only a long list of government bodies, but from others; and, in subsection (10), gives discretion to the Secretary of State to disapply subsections (8) and (9). Subsection (8) requires that information in relation to passports should be destroyed no later than 28 days after the passport is issued. Subsection (9) contains another provision related to that. The clause gives discretion to the Secretary of State to disapply those subsections where he or she thinks it is “desirable” for the purposes of preventing or detecting crime and so on. That is fair enough, provided there is an independent reviewer who can look at that and make sure that no slackness has entered the system, and that any use of the discretions in the clause has been sensible and justifiable.

Finally, the Joint Committee expressed concern about the proportionality of some of the rights given to the Secretary of State by the Bill. For those reasons, I commend Amendment 19, and the inclusion of an independent review in the Bill. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester)]

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will forgive me. The Committee is considering Amendment 12, and Amendment 19 is grouped with it. I assume that what the noble Lord is doing is speaking to his amendment, not moving it.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Indeed he is. I apologise.