Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Gold and Baroness Kramer

Wednesday 11th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gold (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose this amendment. I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord McFall, and I fully agree—I suspect we all agree—that the examples he has mentioned of culpable things that have gone wrong cannot be acceptable. However, hearing his comments on the demands of public opinion makes me even more certain that we should oppose this amendment, because the rule of law must be upheld and we must allow the innocent to remain innocent until proved guilty.

Regulation is terribly important and we must give appropriate powers to the regulators to enable them to undertake their work effectively, including the ability to search out evidence in order to ascertain what went wrong and who was responsible. They must be able to break down any firewall that the institutions might have erected. Employees in financial institutions must fear the consequences of acting badly and know that if they break the rules the consequences could be very severe, including heavy fines and maybe a prison sentence.

If we have failed to achieve these things, however, the answer is not to shift the burden of proof so that the defendant has to prove his innocence. That would be tantamount to giving up the challenge. Instead, we must tighten up the regulator’s powers and create an appropriate and effective regulatory regime, one that can achieve what all of us want, which is to protect those dealing with the financial institutions and punish those who fail in their duties.

In this Bill, the Government are aiming to do just that by extending the regulatory regime to all financial services firms and giving power to the regulator to make and enforce rules of conduct. This materially strengthens the regulator’s position. In so doing, it rightly reverses the burden of proof so as no longer to presume guilt, requiring the defendant to prove innocence, and we should not now allow that to continue.

I welcome the Government’s proposals for several reasons. First, I believe it is right to extend the regulatory regime across the whole financial services industry and thereby strengthen regulation. It is also right that we should not change a fundamental tenet of English law, which is that a person is innocent until proved guilty. As I have indicated, to reverse the burden of proof in this way is an excuse for failing to create an effective regulatory regime. Indeed, it is a lazy way of dealing with a problem and should not be countenanced. The provision that it is now proposed should be reversed, frankly, should never have been enacted. I am pleased that the Government have now recognised this.

In proposing this change, the Government seek to treat all financial institutions in the same way. Surely that must be right and fair. Why should there be one rule for large institutions and another for smaller ones? If a financial institution or someone working there breaks the rules then there should be a consequence, and everyone should be treated equally. Any suggestion that there should be a two-tier system so that the present law presuming guilt applies only to certain institutions, but the burden of proof shifts for those institutions that now come within this regulatory regime, is unfair. We should not discriminate between institutions. This could lead to unfair competition and could prejudice the very people we wish to protect—the consumers and customers.

The effectiveness of these new rules, once in force, should be carefully monitored and scrutinised. If, despite the extension of the regulatory regime now proposed, more is required, the Government must not shy away from a further extension of regulatory powers. However, in so doing, they should not then restore the short cut of shifting the burden of proof.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I cannot in any way better the speeches of my noble friend Lord Sharkey and the noble Lord, Lord McFall, but maybe I could make a few additional comments.

First, there is the argument in favour of a two-tier system. The regulator is already managing the banks and the financial services industry as a two-tier system. There are different rules for systemically important institutions and for the much smaller institutions whose behaviour cannot disturb the financial stability of the country. If the principle is that the banking industry and the financial services industry should be regulated only under a single tier, the Government are, in a sense, demanding that a great deal of regulation be rolled back, which, they are currently arguing, makes us more secure. We have a two-tier system; we are arguing that that two-tier system should encompass this kind of liability.

I want to also talk about the difficulties in pursuing senior managers when their institutions have been involved in outrageous and illegal behaviour. These are not victimless crimes, although they are often treated as though they are. The collapse of the banking system had a huge impact on people up and down the country: people lost their jobs, had to live through a period of suppressed wages and have seen public services cut. The experiences of ordinary people over the last five years have been wretched, and the trigger for that crisis was a financial crisis created by systemic financial institutions—so many people suffered as a consequence of that.

If I look at the misbehaviour inside the banks, I see that those were not victimless crimes. The families that paid for PPI that they did not need and could not use were often families without large resources—the cost mattered. Small businesses were persuaded to enter into interest rate swaps that were completely inappropriate for them, and some went under as a consequence of the problems generated by those swaps. Money laundering, which was on an industrial scale across many of our institutions, supported the drugs trade, prostitution and people trafficking, all of which did extensive damage to our communities. LIBOR mis-selling and mispriced mortgages and loans for individuals over a long period of time came at a significant cost to them, as well as, frankly, bringing the City of London into disrepute and, for a time, putting it at risk as a financial centre. We know that the United States seriously considered whether or not London could continue to be a major player if it could so poorly regulate its financial institutions as to allow manipulation of a core measure such as LIBOR.