Future of Financial Services
Lord Flight Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
I am not able to give specific answers to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, on those subjects at the moment. They will, no doubt, be included in the ongoing negotiations. If we receive clarity on that in the next few weeks, I will happily write to her.
Lord Flight (Con) [V]
My Lords, I apologise that my screen has gone wrong while waiting. I first declare my interest. [Inaudible.]
The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
Lord Flight, could you come closer to your microphone? Do not worry about your screen.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
No. Let us try again: one more time, Lord Flight.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
No, you are cutting in and out.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
Let us move to the next speaker and we will come back. Apologies, Lord Flight, but you were breaking in and out.
Home Secretary: Allegations of Bullying
Lord Flight Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I have nothing further to add to the replies I gave earlier about the ongoing process.
Lord Flight (Con) [V]
What sort of behaviour is sufficiently aggressive to be described by the Government as bullying?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the Government take bullying very seriously. In 2018, the Civil Service undertook a review of the arrangements for tackling harassment and misconduct within the service. The Ministerial Code is clear that
“harassing, bullying or other inappropriate or discriminating behaviour is not consistent with the Ministerial Code and will not be tolerated.”
That is the position of the Government.
Parliament: Restoration and Renewal Project
Lord Flight Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, I think the second part of the noble Lord’s question is germane to the Question that follows; I am not sure if he has a chance to ask a question on that. The Conservative Party’s donations are declared, permissible and controlled. On the first part of his question, I stand by every word I used last week.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, I hope our democratic machinery will get a move on in taking a decision about relocation and will take a wholly common-sense view on what is appropriate, which I personally believe is to stay in Westminster. The great cities of this country have an important local leadership role and a role liaising with Westminster, but I do not think it makes any great sense for them to be considered as a location for our Houses of Parliament. The Minister is not necessarily in a position to support that, but I would be interested in his personal views.
Lord True
My Lords, giving personal views from this Dispatch Box is probably not the wisest thing. On the timescale, again, the sponsor body is independent. It will conduct its review on the timescale it has set out, but I understand that it expects and hopes to report this autumn.
Economy: Update
Lord Flight Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
I thank the noble Lord for his question and indeed for his perspicacity in the statements he made on 18 March, and on them becoming policy very shortly afterwards. In that light, if the noble Lord would like to write to me with his ideas, I assure him that I will follow that up with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and see what more we can do. I completely agree that we will need a more flexible and nuanced system as we move into the next phase of this crisis.
Lord Flight (Con)
May I add my congratulations to the Chancellor and the Treasury team for the dexterity with which they have brought in imaginative measures? My specific question, where I declare an interest as chairman of the EIS Association, is on whether the Government would consider introducing for the short term an increase in the size of the value of EIS tax credits? I believe that this would stimulate substantial private investment in SMEs; indeed, some £20 billion has been invested as a result of these EIS measures in the past. EIS has played a vital role encouraging the SME sector in this country.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I thank my noble friend for his question and I will certainly take it back to the Treasury. It is worth remembering that the combination of the EIS, SEIS and VC schemes are pretty generous for investors, with the tax reliefs that they get. I suspect that, as an experienced investor, my noble friend Lord Flight will know that valuations will fall pretty dramatically for businesses looking for funding if they are early stage. Therefore, there will be a lot of opportunities for the entrepreneurial investor over the next few months. None the less, I will certainly take my noble friend’s suggestions back for further consideration.
Covid-19: Self-employed
Lord Flight Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, delivering a scheme for the self-employed is a difficult operational challenge, particularly in the rapid timescale required. The Government’s priority is to get support to those who need it as quickly as possible, in the fairest way. The design of the scheme, including the £50,000 threshold, means that it is targeted at those who need it most, and who are most reliant on their self-employment income. Some 95% of those who are mostly self-employed will benefit; those who do not meet the eligibility criteria for the SEISS may have access to a range of other support, including the more generous universal credit and deferral of tax schemes. I hope to address the dividend points in answer to a separate question.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, will the Government give greater priority to speeding up the provision of financial assistance to SMEs, in particular through the new future fund?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the Government are making sure that people and businesses have access to the support they need as quickly as possible. We have tried to design measures that can be made operational quickly and effectively. Lenders have increased the number of loans they are approving every day and staff are working to process applications as quickly as possible. Over 12,000 CBILS loans have been made to businesses so far, meaning benefits of some £2 billion in finance and the rate of approvals is accelerating.
Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [HL]
Lord Flight Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Lord Higgins
My Lords, as a former chair of the Liaison Committee in the House of Commons, which co-ordinates the work of the Select Committee system, as well as having been chairman of the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, I very much welcome the proposals put forward by the Government. Of course, there are various qualifications, which have just been mentioned, but I believe that this is a significant step forward and that it will improve the way in which the appointments system works within overall government. Therefore, I think that this is an excellent amendment and I heartily support it.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, as I understand it, the proposed arrangements effectively give the Treasury Select Committee a sort of negative veto after the event. Why could this not be more straightforward, with senior appointments such as the head of the FCA requiring the approval of the Treasury Select Committee up front?
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, perhaps I may pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Flight. The FCA is one regulator. We understand that there is great pressure to move on this issue now because the FCA had lost so much confidence and so many people have questioned whether it is genuinely an independent regulator. However, the PRA, turning into the PRC, is an equal, if not more critical, regulator of our banking system, and of course appointments to the Bank of England—particularly that of governor—are also crucial. Therefore, can the Government tell us why they have not broadened out this change in approach, which is surely just a modernisation and a recognition of the significant interest that Parliament and the country have in these appointments?
Lord Flight
My Lords, I welcome the amendment but the issue of PEPs is by no means solved and there is still a lot of nonsense happening. The last ruling by the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, was, interestingly, that PEPs were politicians in countries outside the UK and not within it; that came as a great shock to all of us. The EU rules make it clear that that is not the case and that PEPs are to be treated as domestic. In theory, that includes all Members of this House and the House of Commons and many others. That is completely ridiculous. The bottom line is whether people have the power to engage in corruption. I suggest that Members of this House, or in the Commons, do not have the power to engage in corruption unless they are a Minister.
Banks are criticised, but operating a bank account for a PEP is a complete loss leader, because banks are obliged to always check the source of funds and question any payment into the account. This is completely ridiculous unless you are dealing with people who are potentially corrupt. Where is all this coming from? It is the FCA that is giving out very strict guidelines to banks on how the PEP rules should be implemented. As I understand it, those guidelines are, at the moment, contrary to the Government’s own arrangements and I fear they may remain too demanding in future.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, the kind of language the Government may use in dealing with this in legislation may be limited, but I am very glad that they are taking action. Will they take on board, when talking with allies in other countries, the importance of how the concept of the PEP is handled? I am in the appalling situation of finding that my husband’s relatives in the United States have been challenged on opening accounts because they are related to me. How that relationship was disclosed, I find extraordinary. There must have been an awful lot of trawling through genealogical tables, or else someone is reading my emails. There is a serious issue about how this spreads to the families of Members of this House, of Members of the other place and of others who may rightly be regarded as politically exposed. Their relatives at many distances removed surely cannot be caught in that trap.
Banking: Financial Crime
Lord Flight Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Bridges of Headley
The Bill does not change any existing obligations on individuals working in the financial services industry to report wrongdoing whether within their own firm, to regulators or to other authorities. To address the noble Lord’s question directly, the FCA published in October a package of rules designed to encourage a culture in banks where individuals feel able to raise concerns and challenge poor practice and behaviour. Those rules will also constitute non-binding guidance for other financial services firms.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the new senior managers regime imposes extremely detailed requirements for dealing with both accountability and responsibility—it is virtually micromanaged and reported on—and that the suggestion that the new arrangements have gone soft is completely wrong?
Lord Bridges of Headley
I entirely agree with the noble Lord. The new system will be robust and proportionate.
Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [HL]
Lord Flight Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Eatwell for this amendment, which takes us to the central problem with the Bill. His words are powerful: he calls the Bill opaque and obscure, and he says that it leaves unclear who makes policy. I thank him for his review of the previous legislation and his assurance that, broadly speaking, it works. I thank him for the concept of an “active entity”, which I shall adopt. However, he comes back to the point: who is doing what?
Perhaps before I go on, I should explain where the Opposition stand on the Bill. We feel that the role of the Bank of England is quite central to the economy and that it needs to be reviewed and probably reformed. We believe that, to do that, we have to have a period of reflection and study. My noble friend the Shadow Chancellor in another place has announced those reviews. Nevertheless, in respect of this Bill, we have a role to review the Bill, ensure that it makes sense and do all that we can to help the Government bring it back to a more sensible position.
Like my noble friend, having read the Bill, I ended up feeling that I understood less about how the Bank works than I did when we were in the very painful position in 2012—I say painful because it took so long to get there—when we created the legislation that created the present situation. Largely speaking, there is a question around why we are changing it from something that is clear to something that is significantly less clear. I thank the Minister for all his help in trying to help me understand the Bill—I wish that he had had more success. I am very grateful for the consolidated document that his staff have produced, and that has made studying the Bill and the Acts that it affects so much more straightforward. I also thank the Minister for the meetings he arranged, with himself and with the chairman of the court.
Those two meetings had an interesting effect: they produced two letters. One was dated 4 November and the other was dated November; noble Lords will have to take my word for it that it came after 4 November. I will quote selectively from the letters and am very happy to circulate them to anybody who is interested. Under a large paragraph labelled “Court of Directors and Financial Stability Strategy”, the Minister says:
“The Court, as the governing body of the Bank, is responsible for managing the Bank’s affairs except for the formulation of monetary policy. The Court is also responsible for determining the Bank’s objectives and strategy, and, in line with the Court’s role overseeing the Bank, the Bill makes the Court responsible for the oversight functions. The Court is therefore ultimately responsible for deciding how power given to ‘the Bank’ should be exercised, and how duties given to ‘the Bank’ should be fulfilled. This includes the Bank’s recovery and resolution powers”.
When I read that, I thought that it was pretty straightforward and sounded like any other company: power rests with the board—we happen to call it “the court”—except for where it is either taken out by statute, which it clearly is in the formation of monetary policy, or where the court has decided to delegate that power.
Unfortunately, after I met the chairman of the court, I got another, shorter letter. Under a paragraph labelled “Powers and duties conferred on the Bank”, it said:
“As the governing body of the Bank, the court is responsible for deciding how powers given to the Bank should be exercised and ensuring that the Bank fulfils its duties”.
That sounds okay. It then goes on to say that:
“These include powers and duties in relation to note issuance, resolution, and supervision of financial market infrastructures”.
It does not quite say that it shall have no other duties, but I put it to noble Lords that they are a pretty thin number of duties, given the tremendous responsibility that the Bank has in our monetary affairs. In the next paragraph, under the heading, “Powers and duties conferred on statutory committees”, the letter states:
“Powers and duties conferred on a statutory committee are for that committee to exercise, according to the terms of their legislation. The Court cannot exercise the powers conferred on a statutory committee”.
Because there was no legislation passed between 4 November and the something of November, I assume that the two letters say the same thing; I just have a lot of trouble seeing how. If the first letter is right, as I read it, then I am relatively comfortable. Unlike the Bill—and we can clear that up with some amendments—it restates my understanding that the court is in charge, except where responsibility is taken out by legislation. The second letter rather implies that there are four entities in the Bank: the Financial Policy Committee, the Monetary Policy Committee and the Prudential Regulation Committee—I think I have got them roughly right—which have clear powers and lots of authority and are all, incidentally, chaired by the governor; and then there is something called “the Bank”, which is left with note issuance, resolution and supervising infrastructure. We all know that no committee is going to have much to do in a resolution situation, since it will happen over a weekend in 48 hours We have moved from a position where the court is central to the Bank to one where it seems almost irrelevant.
There are two points here. First, is that move the Government’s intention and, secondly, is it clear? We are going to worry elsewhere about the standards for senior management in banks. If a bank came along with its roles and responsibilities as obscurely set out as we now have in the proposed legislation, it would be denied a licence to operate. What are we asking from these organisations? It is absolute clarity of who does what, with what authority. This does not meet those standards and it would not get a licence. I hope the Minister will ponder on what my noble friend, Lord Eatwell, and I have said. If he agrees that the Bill produces more obscurity than light, I hope he will pause and bring forward some amendments on Report, first to make absolutely clear what the Bill does.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, when the Bill was published, I wrote to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury on this territory, because I could not really understand how the reorganisation of the Bank was intended to operate, or what it intended to achieve. Part of the reply I got was:
“The Governor has said that: ‘Our strategy will be to conduct supervision as an integrated part of the central bank and not as a standalone supervisory agency that happens to be attached to a central bank’. De-subsidiarisation, together with the organisational changes being put in place by the Bank as part of its ‘One Bank’ strategy, is an important element of this, and will help to break down any remaining barriers that could stand in the way of a unified culture and impede flexible and coordinated working across the Bank”.
I thought about this and looked at the structure. In answer to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, what struck me was that “the Bank” actually means “the Governor”.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)
I begin by thanking noble Lords who have spared the time to meet and discuss aspects of the Bill. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for his kind words, but it was clear that some of my epistles have caused more confusion than I would wish. I will try and address that, and the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. I am conscious that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, like so many others in your Lordships’ House, has a lot more experience in this, so bear with me as I set out the Government’s case on this specific point.
It is a good point to start with because we are, as a Committee, seeking to answer the question, which the noble Lord posed very eloquently, of “What is the Bank of England?”—which is a good place to start with in a Bank of England Bill. As he rightly said, during Second Reading he worried that this definition might be an amorphous entity and I completely agree that a full answer to his question is overdue. Let me try to answer it.
The noble Lord referred to the 1998 Act. The Bank of England is defined in the Interpretation Act 1978, which tells us:
“Bank of England means, as the context requires, the Governor and Company of the Bank of England or the bank of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England”.
Acts amended by this Bill either refer to “the Bank” and define that expression as “the Bank of England”, or refer initially to “the Bank of England”, so that it is clear what the subsequent references to “the Bank” mean.
This is all well and good for making sure that the corpus of legislation functions neatly, but I know that it does not quite get to the nub of the noble Lord’s question, which is: what does it mean when legislation such as this Bill names “the Bank”, who does the work and, as the noble Lord rightly said, who is responsible? Legislation generally confers powers and duties on the Bank of England in two ways: either directly on the Bank or on a statutory committee of the Bank. Sometimes legislation grants roles directly to court, and we will get on to what that means when we discuss Clause 5.
However, for now I want to focus on the question of what it means when powers and duties are conferred on the Bank. Who is responsible for the Bank in relation to these powers and duties? The answer is: the court is. As the governing body of the Bank, the court is responsible for deciding how powers given to the Bank should be exercised and ensuring that the Bank fulfils its duties. Powers and duties granted to the Bank include, as the noble Lord said, those in relation to note issuance, resolution and supervision of financial infrastructures. As he rightly said, he should take the first letter he received as the position on this.
The court may delegate these powers and duties within the Bank as it deems fit, a situation the noble Lord’s amendment would try to replicate. However—this is the heart of the matter—the court remains responsible for that delegation, and where it decides to delegate powers and duties the court still retains ultimate responsibility for the exercise of those powers and duties. I hope that gives some shape to what the Bank is and who is responsible within the Bank for determining how it fulfils the responsibilities conferred on it.
Some powers and duties are not conferred on the Bank but on statutory committees. Powers and duties conferred on a statutory committee are for that committee to exercise according to the terms of its legislation. The court cannot exercise the powers conferred on a statutory committee. That said, even when powers and duties are conferred on a statutory committee, the court still has responsibilities. As the governing body of the Bank, the court is responsible for ensuring that the statutory committees exercise their statutory roles and responsibilities effectively, including that they are adequately resourced and supported to do so.
The Bill reinforces this role of court by making the oversight functions the responsibility of the whole court, a point we will come on to. For example, the oversight functions include keeping under review the Bank’s performance in relation to the duty of the FPC.
I am conscious that the noble Lord may have further questions in regard to what I have said. Let me pick up on one point. He asked about the FPC and who is doing the consulting. It is for the court to approve changes to the code of practice for, I think it is, the MPC because it is responsible for managing the affairs of the Bank. I hope that addresses his point.
Lord Flight
My Lords, I support the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. If the number of independent directors on the court is reduced to seven, and is not far off being equal to the number of resident directors, I am not sure what role the court has. I also raise the point as to what should independent directors of the court be. What sort of people should be there and how should they be appointed? I was surprised when exploring this to be told that there was now a ruling that a member of the court must not be any NED of any form of bank. It seems that, by and large, NEDs on the boards of banks are, in today’s world, almost an extension of regulators. One of their prime governance tasks is to make sure that the banks are run properly, in accordance with regulatory requirements. I would have thought that the independent members of the court ought to be a cross-section of NEDs from banks and other financial institutions, and that to say, “Oh no, you mustn’t have anybody who is an NED of a bank because there is a conflict of interest”, is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the court.
Obviously, if the bank of the individual NED were being discussed, they could leave the room and behave as in the normal arrangements when any conflict of interest arises. However, I repeat: if the court is to do a useful job, it should have on it independent representatives who have first-hand experience of the banking system in this country.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, not just for his amendment but for the arguments that he put forward, with which we have a great deal of sympathy. I still find it difficult to understand the Government’s case for reducing the number of the non-executive directors in the Bill from nine to seven. I am sure that this issue will run like a—I almost said a golden thread, but certainly a constant thread throughout our discussions because we are concerned about the issues of accountability and openness, as well as the effectiveness of the Bank. I know that the Government want to achieve all those objectives. At the moment, I am afraid we have not, despite the assiduous work of the Minister. I pay due regard to that and to the meetings we have had identifying aspects of the Government’s case. However, we are still not persuaded of the merits of this argument, although the Minister obviously thought that we would be, and we probably anticipated that we would be.
I am unclear as to why the Government want to reduce the number to seven; they must recognise that that will change the balance of the court. What is the argument for reducing this crucial number of non-executive directors? I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Flight, said about a certain qualification for non-executive directors, but he would be the first to recognise that we need on this body people with a breadth of experience and understanding, not just of banking issues but of the most fundamental aspects of the operation of the economy.
What seems to underpin the Government’s position is the view that plenty of academic evidence exists which indicates that smaller boards are preferable to the more extensive boards that obtained in a great deal of City institutions in the past. I am not against that consideration as I hold academics in some regard. I probably ought to, given the well-informed contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, who discussed the preceding Bill to which this one obviously relates, so of course I respect academic opinion on size. However, unless the Government make their case with greater clarity than they have done so far, I am not prepared to accept that the Bank of England is exactly like any other City institution. It is not. It has responsibilities and duties that go beyond those of any other institution and because of that we have to look carefully at the balance of forces on the Bank’s board. I almost use the word “cavalier” with regard to what the Government are doing, although I am not sure that they are being cavalier. However, they are seeking to reduce the size of the court and are claiming that this is good practice on the basis of some fairly thin arguments. We want to see good practice on the part of the Bank. We are well aware that the present position is the product of the legislation that was taken through after the crisis. We are all well aware of the criticisms and failures that occurred during the 2007-08 financial and economic crisis. However, we do not believe that the Government’s proposition for the Bank is based on secure arguments or that it will result in improvements.
We would like to know how the Government reached their decision to reduce the number of executives while increasing the official side of the Bank. We are not sure what consultation was undertaken on these matters, what advice was taken or who the prime mover behind such a striking and significant change was. The Minister is working hard on the Bill. We value that and the expertise he brings to it. This is only a limited aspect of the whole issue of the accountability and effectiveness of the Bank. However, on this point, the Government have thus far not established their case. Therefore, Her Majesty’s Opposition broadly support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey.
Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [HL]
Lord Flight Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, I regret to say that I, too, have reservations about this legislation. First, with regard to the restructuring of the Bank of England and the PRA, I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, said. It also, to some extent, came across to me like shuffling the deckchairs—I will not say on the “Titanic”—and I wonder really whether there will be much or any effect. Power will stay with the governor. The Bill is full of contradictions in that it says it is aimed at integrating the PRA and microprudential policy more fully into the Bank—not, by the way, why or how—but then makes the PRA responsible to the Bank’s Prudential Regulation Committee and at the same time counters this by moves to protect the PRA’s operational independence. What does it want? To be candid, I think the PRA needs to be an independent regulator. It should obviously liaise with the Bank of England on its other functions, but I would have thought that that would be pretty automatic.
I did not like the abolition of the oversight committee and agree with the comments made by other noble Lords. There are also measures that are described as strengthening governance, but to my mind what is missing is something comparable to the senior managers and certification regime which banks are going to have. At present there is no laying down of responsibility or accountability by regulatory staff in the PRA, the Bank or the FCA, and yet I think we all know that the FSA had significant involvement in causing the banking crisis through wholly inadequate and inappropriate regulation.
There is a code of practice for all Bank committees on handling conflicts of interest. That is excellent, but I am surprised to discover that, at least at present, the Bank is banning anyone joining the court who is either an executive or non-executive director of a bank. It seems to me that NEDs, in particular, are very much the eyes and ears of regulators and the court should have people on it who can actually report on what is going on in the real commercial banking world. I agree with what the previous noble Lord said about the National Audit Office. Again, it seems that the Bank wants to have its cake and eat it, in that, while the National Audit Office has power to launch value-for-money searches, the Bank is there to define what is policy and to exclude the NAO from anything it chooses to define as policy. That undermines the independence.
Back in 2012, as noble Lords will know, the Act set clear rules for the Bank’s operational responsibility and the Treasury’s responsibility in the light of the banking crisis, the Treasury having the whip hand as being responsible for any decision involving public funds. We now have a detailed MoU of how the two are to interact. Personally, I think it is inappropriate and unnecessary and could actually be cluttersome in a crisis, when speed is of the essence, but there seems to be an obsession everywhere nowadays with writing every last micromanagement detail down.
As for the senior managers and certification regime, the objective of raising standards of conduct—not just of senior managers but of the next layer of management also—and of identifying responsibilities is clearly excellent. However, I was disappointed to find no mention of the fundamental principle of integrity and honesty. In that context, I declare my interest in the register and, in particular, as a director of Metro Bank. I am seeing the other end of this coming in at Metro Bank. By the way, I think that “guilty until proven innocent” had to go. As Andrew Bailey pointed out, the courts would throw it out in due course anyway, as being contrary to the very fundamentals of British law.
At the other end of the new regime, again, there is an awful lot of paper. I chair the nomination and remuneration committee and at our first session looking at it there were 40 pages of detail and 26 different areas of responsibility to be worked out and gone through. To me, it has come across as somewhat overprescriptive, but, I repeat, without the all-important requirement of principles.
There is also a strange requirement for senior managers to notify the regulator every year if they think the regulator would have grounds for withdrawing approval from any particular senior manager. I think that a rather strange requirement; I certainly would not want to be the manager or director responsible for that.
The time limit for disciplinary action is raised from three to six years. I can understand the reason for that. I am slightly more critical of making a criminal liability for alleged reckless decisions leading to bank failure. It is fine after the event, but something viewed as reckless subsequently may not have been viewed as such at the time, so there are definitional problems there.
With the next layer certification regime—that is, internal management certifying annually the next layer of management’s fitness and propriety—there is a complication of three material risk areas: European Banking Authority criteria, PRA criteria and FCA criteria. It also covers staff with the ability to take independent decisions to commit the bank and to affect the bank’s risk profile, and all staff giving any form of advice. I think the certification regime is rather sensible and ought to be capable of being managed well by the banking industry. My main criticism is that it is wrong to include NEDs who chair one of the main committees within the management grouping, in that, first, NEDs are increasingly the agents of regulators on a bank board anyway—their duties are very much in the area of making sure that the bank is run properly. Secondly, they are not actually involved in the day-to-day management of banks, so I have yet to have anyone explain to me or particularly convince me as to the appropriateness of the chairman of the various committees being within the management regime.
Furthermore, I may be overly concerned, but extending the regime to all the financial services industry beyond banks seems strange, in that banks are quite different from fund management or insurance businesses. How they are run requires an appropriate oversight regime. I also make the point that the investment management industry came through the crisis perfectly well, and I do not really see that there is a huge need to impose new layers of management monitoring on it—it is quite a well-managed industry. But it is not yet clear what extending the regime across the whole sector actually means.
I have a few final points. When looking at the consultation document, it seemed to me that those who participated were nowhere near a representative sample of the City or the financial services industry generally. I would have thought that whoever organised the consultation should have roped in some other more suitable parties. I remain concerned at the mounting costs of regulation, ultimately borne by clients, pension funds and the public, and raised by the noble Lords, Lord Lawson and Lord McFall. Yes, indeed, the volume of fines paid since 2010 by the top five US banks and top 20 European banks is equivalent to $300 billion. As pointed out, that is shareholders’ money and, frequently, pension funds’ money; more seriously, it limits the ability of the banking system to lend. If there is one thing staring you in the eye that was wrong with the banking system, it was that it was under-capitalised, and it still is under-capitalised. I believe that banks should have a capital ratio of towards 8%; that is what one was taught when learning economics 50 years ago. So you are just taking away the capital—and I should like to see some attempt to address the ability of regulatory authorities to fine institutions in this way. It would probably at least need UK and US co-operation; it has got out of control and is completely damaging.
Taxation: Capital Gains Tax
Lord Flight Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Bridges of Headley
The noble Baroness makes an interesting point. As noble Lords know, this Government are intent on helping working people. Last year, we cut income tax for more than 26 million people, took more than 3 million out of income tax altogether and created more than 1,000 jobs every single day. This Government intend to do better still.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, I recollect that, for an asset which has been held for a long time, the base value can be uprated to that which applied in, I think, 1983. However, inflation has made a nonsense of that. Will the Government look at changing the date at which long-held assets are rebased for cost purposes?
Lord Bridges of Headley
I hear what my noble friend is saying. However, I tread with extreme trepidation and say that decisions on that matter are for the Chancellor to announce at the Budget.