Financial Services Bill

Lord Hammond of Runnymede Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 28th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hammond of Runnymede (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my directorship of OakNorth International and my membership of the international advisory board of Nomura, both of them banks.

It is a privilege to address your Lordships’ House for the first time. It may be only 100 yards from the other place, but it is a very different place. I am extremely grateful to the officers and staff of the House and to my supporters, my noble friends Lord Moynihan and Lord Barwell, for their welcome and assistance as I navigate the customs and practices—and indeed the corridors—of this place. I am delighted to be making this speech from the Government Benches, having momentarily mislaid the Conservative whip during the last few weeks of my 22-year career in the Commons.

The title of Lord Hammond of Runnymede may speak to the wider world of the ancient roots of our democracy and of the origins of the rule of law, but, for me, it will always recall the privilege of representing the people of Runnymede and Weybridge, sharing their problems, challenges and triumphs over more than two decades.

My Back-Bench career in the other place was short. The year 1997 was rather like the day after the battle of the Somme in the parliamentary Conservative Party. The general staff was in disarray, the officer corps decimated and new recruits like myself were being promoted in the field; thus began my 12-year apprenticeship on the Opposition Front Bench, before entering the Government in 2010, where I had the privilege to lead four great departments of state, each remarkable in its own different way.

I arrived at the Department for Transport with a single clear instruction: get HS2 built. As an immediate former shadow Chief Secretary, I approached this task with a degree of scepticism, but quickly became a convert to the potential of high-speed rail to change the facts of economic geography, as the original railway had changed Victorian England, and to play a key role in rebalancing the UK economy.

I moved on to defence in the dying days of the Libya campaign of 2011. The MoD is an extraordinary place, a military headquarters as well as a department of state. It is shaped by its unique blend of civilian and uniformed staff and the ethos of the Armed Forces that pervades it. It was an enormous privilege to work with it through a period of managed withdrawal from Afghanistan and majoring restructuring at home as we reconfigured the department and delivered a balanced Budget for the first time in a decade.

In July 2014, my next move was across the road to the grandeur of the FCO and by far the best office in Whitehall. I say to noble Lords that it is not for nothing that successive Foreign Secretaries have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that Prime Ministers do not enter that room. In two years as Foreign Secretary, I made 104 overseas visits to 78 countries, gaining an invaluable insight into how others see us and our contribution to their histories—for better or for worse, there are remarkably few in whose histories we have not played a role of some kind. What I learned is how much importance our many friends attach to the characteristics, structures and institutions that define our nation and of which we sometimes appear to be so careless.

In July 2016, my final move was to No. 11. As the guardian of Britain’s economic and fiscal interests, it is hardly surprising that, whatever the political arguments, the Treasury saw Brexit primarily as a threat to the UK’s economic success story. With storm clouds gathering over the economy and uncertainty rife, I set myself a four-point plan: first, to complete the rebuilding of our public finances as a bulwark against the next crisis, little guessing that the next crisis would come so soon; secondly, to soften the economic blow of exiting the single market by securing a transition period, which is uncontroversial now but was a heretical notion in the Brexit-intoxicated days of autumn 2016; thirdly, to shift the balance of public spending, albeit gently, from consumption to investment as part of a plan to unlock the productivity riddle that has bedevilled the British economy since the Second World War; and, finally, to protect our vital financial services industry, which despite the Treasury’s sometimes expansive view of its role is actually the only sector for which it has direct responsibility. That brings me neatly to the Bill.

I strongly support all the objectives that the Government have set out for the Bill, making it an ideal vehicle for a maiden speech by someone who has so recently recovered the Whip. I want to take the opportunity to note the importance of financial services not just to London but to the whole UK economy—it provides 7% of our GDP, 11% of tax revenues and millions of jobs across the length and breadth of Britain—to plead, even at this late stage, for a greater focus on it in our ongoing discussions with the EU and to suggest the inclusion of a duty on our regulators to promote competitiveness as some other countries have done. I hope that it will be the first of many measures designed to reinforce the stability and competitiveness of UK financial services as they absorb the challenge of what, for them, is a no-deal Brexit and the inevitable, albeit gradual, loss of EU business.

I enjoyed every minute of my nine years in Cabinet and I learned much from the many extraordinary people I encountered on my journey. I hope that the experience that I have gained leading four great departments of state will qualify me to contribute to your Lordships’ debates over the years to come.