Economy: Fiscal Framework

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

Yes, my Lords.

[Lord Higgins]

Does my noble friend agree that the impression that one gets of the IMF’s views on the Chancellor’s policies by reading the press are very different from the impression one gets if one actually reads the IMF reports?

[Lord Newby]

I will say yes to that as well. However, the Government completely agree with the point that the IMF made about the desirability of bringing forward infrastructure expenditure. That is why last year we put in place the infrastructure guarantee programme, which is already bearing fruit with the allocation of £1 billion to the Northern line extension to Battersea, and the recently announced £75 million to be given to Drax power station for its partial conversion to biomass.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, I certainly agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken—we have heard an outstanding maiden speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox of Soho. However, I should also add a word of warning: competition is increasing from the younger generation. I discovered last weekend that my eight year-old grandson has created his own fully operational website. An interesting section at the end states that no harm has been caused to animals in the creation of the website, which indicates a correct order of priorities.

I welcome various aspects of the gracious Speech, particularly the action that is proposed to be taken on asbestos-related cancer. That matter has been raised previously in your Lordships’ House but without success. I am glad that proposals are now in place to deal with it. Other than that, I think that the gracious Speech is regarded as being somewhat thin, and there is a tendency to concentrate on what has been left out rather than what has been put in, particularly at the other end of the building. None the less, there is no doubt that the central part, as far as economic management is concerned, is embodied in the paragraph that states:

“My Ministers will continue to prioritise measures that reduce the deficit, ensuring interest rates are kept low for home owners and businesses”.

I strongly support the line that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken on this. However, I am somewhat concerned by the assertion, which was repeated by my noble friend on the Front Bench this afternoon, that we have reduced the deficit by a third. I do not think that that is the right way to put it. One should say that we are still increasing borrowing at two-thirds the appalling rate set by the previous Government. I do not believe that this can go on. It is crucial that we find a means of reducing that deficit, as stated in the gracious Speech. I said right at the beginning of the formation of the coalition how difficult that would be. We are still not the least bit clear where the Opposition stand. Mr Balls still seems to be saying that the deficit has been cut too soon and too much. I do not believe that either of those assertions is valid.

However, the policy is now being reappraised. An IMF team is making its usual annual visit to the UK. The press seems to be indicating that the IMF’s support for the Chancellor’s policy is weakening. I believe that that is wrong. I very much hope that the IMF will continue to sustain his efforts to reduce the deficit and ensure that our position is sustained internationally. Various people have argued against the stance adopted by the Chancellor, as we have heard from the opposition Front Bench today. However, one thing is absolutely clear: the rating agencies are not reducing our rating because we are cutting the deficit too much but because we are not cutting it enough. That is an important point to take into account.

At the same time, we have to relate this overall problem to economic management. Demand management seems to have disappeared totally from discussion. It is very important, however, because if we find ourselves in a situation—as we are—where fiscal stimulus is not possible, we must rely on monetary measures. To that extent, I very much welcome the action that has been taken on quantitative easing. It is, of course, true that this is having a serious effect on pension funds, as was pointed out by the opposition Front Bench. The time has probably come to reappraise whether achieving quantitative easing by working through the gilts market is the right way to do it—that is, the rather ludicrous situation whereby the Bank of England purchases the gilts and then pays interest to the Chancellor. That is rather silly. We should consider other ways of doing this as we will never want to reissue the debt which has been purchased. If we need to do that to control inflationary pressures later on, that can be done by issuing new gilts, which are likely to be of a better form and duration than those which have been purchased. I suggest to my noble friend on the Front Bench that we need to do some serious work on that matter.

The article by my noble friend Lord Lawson was very helpful in as much as it made one think afresh about Europe. I have to confess that for many years I have said to people that there is no question whatever of our withdrawing from Europe. I believe that the time has come when we need to reassess that. Indeed, the Prime Minister has indicated that that is the case. The timetable that he has set out is right. In television interviews he is asked whether he would vote to stay in or to go out of Europe if there were a referendum tomorrow. However, that is a totally false question. People come down on one side or the other but usually state their reservations, which are then totally disregarded in subsequent headlines. That is the situation we happen to be in but, as I say, the Prime Minister’s proposed timetable is right and we should follow it.

My noble friend Lord Lawson and others are too pessimistic about negotiations. At all events, we should take the opportunity to negotiate. It would be absurd simply to say that we will pull out without any negotiation whatever. That would not be the right way to approach the problem. However, irrespective of whether the negotiations are likely to be successful, the touchstone is the financial transaction tax. If we fail to resist that being applied to the City of London, the possibility of successfully negotiating other issues may be less than one would hope. None the less, overall, it is worth entering into negotiations and it is worth while to have a referendum in due course, as is proposed.

Meanwhile, those who are in my party need to be very careful. There is not to be a referendum, as I understand it, unless the Conservative Party wins the next general election. If there is one thing that I learnt from some 18 years on the executive of the 1922 Committee in another place it is that the electorate are far more concerned about whether a party standing for election is united than they are about any individual policy. I lived through that in 1997. My only consolation was that the people on the 1922 executive who were being such a pain were the ones who lost their seats. We really must deal with this issue with a little more sensitivity. The press is bound to blow up enormously the matter of a referendum as a great event, which it may be, but we have to keep a sense of perspective on this issue.

Budget Statement

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, myths can be important in politics, and there is now a pretty well established myth that last year’s Budget was a bad Budget. In reality, all the good news came out the day before Budget Day and therefore there was nothing left but criticism on Budget Day itself.

I am sorry that the Chancellor does not appear to have learnt the lesson from that. It is vital that we reassert the convention in Parliament that budgetary matters are first announced to the House of Commons. There are good reasons for that. Obviously it is the right of the House of Commons to receive the news first, but it also prevents the risk of market-sensitive information getting into the public domain and someone making a fortune out of it. I was therefore very concerned by the Evening Standard story last night. I have to say that, obviously in a post-Leveson mood, it made an abject apology in later editions for what was on the front page of the first edition, and that is to be welcomed. It emerged very clearly that it was in receipt of an embargoed copy of the speech. I believe that is totally wrong, not least because it discriminates between some journalists and others, and because it endangers the basic principle. I hope the Minister will give me an assurance that he will speak to his right honourable friend the Chancellor and ensure that that practice is abandoned forthwith and that the traditional view—which was exemplified by Hugh Dalton when he resigned as Chancellor when all he did was to have a quick word as he was going into the Chamber—will prevail.

[Lord Eatwell]

This side totally support the remarks just made by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins.

[Lord Higgins]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I think it should be a unanimous view in Parliament.

I believe this is a very good Budget that does a considerable amount to encourage growth. I particularly welcome, first, the help-to-buy proposals, both of them, which will ensure that there is a higher degree of growth than there would otherwise be. The Minister, in a speech that gave the impression that he wrote it himself, rightly said that there are risks here. It is not clear, if one is going to give guarantees to homebuyers—if one is going to subsidise in this way—that they are really able to meet the responsibilities of taking out a mortgage. We do not want to go back to the disasters of Northern Rock and so on, of which many of us in this House bear the scars, but both schemes are very good and greatly to be welcomed.

I very much welcome the proposal about helping small businesses by removing what the Chancellor rightly described as the jobs tax. Many small businesses are reluctant to take on a few more employees because of the up-front costs. I am sure that the employment allowance will be of considerable help to the state of the economy.

I now turn to the main point with which we are all concerned: the deficit. The Minister referred to it. What was clear from the business about the AAA rating and so on is that we have to press ahead. It is very good news that the slogan that had been emerging, “We have cut the deficit by a quarter”, can now be changed to “We have cut the deficit to a third”, but it still means that we are continuing to borrow more at two-thirds of the rate that the previous, disastrous, Labour Government were maintaining. Therefore, we need to look very carefully at what is being said.

If I may make a rather semantic point, in his speech the Chancellor referred to “cutting borrowing”. He should, of course, have said, “We have been successful in cutting extra borrowing”. Total borrowing continues to go up, and that is of serious concern, not least in relation to monetary policy. It is very important that we look at the new relationship that appears to be developing with the Bank of England. I was always very sceptical of what was always hailed as Gordon Brown’s great achievement of giving independence to the Bank of England because it means that we are handing over more and more power to a small group of people who are totally unaccountable with regard to one of the two main levers of economic management. I hope that we can make progress on this.

On the proposals the Chancellor is making, we certainly need to look at the inflation target and at whether other considerations can be taken into account. Having said that, it would be helpful to move now from what was just an interest rate policy for many years after the Gordon Brown change to a policy that is concerned with controlling the money supply, which is what one really means by “a monetary policy”. I remain a strong supporter of quantitative easing despite the unfortunate side-effects, particularly on private sector pension schemes and so on. If one is not able to do anything because of the deficit problem on the fiscal side, we really must have an active monetary policy. In that context, greater co-ordination between the Treasury and new Bank governor will be of crucial importance. As I have said time and again, and I commend this to my noble friend on the Front Bench, it is absurd that the Treasury is working to one set of economic forecasts and the Bank of England to another. We should have a more unified policy on the link between the monetary and fiscal sides of economic management.

Overall, however, the Chancellor has done everything that could possibly have been done to be helpful, to stimulate growth and to ensure that we continue to do so. However, we must continue to do all that we can to cut the deficit. Immediately after the election and the formation of the coalition, I stressed how incredibly difficult this was going to be on both the tax and expenditure sides. I have been proved absolutely right. We have to go on in the same way. Labour still seems to be saying that we are cutting too much too soon. I am afraid that it is absolutely clear that we have not cut enough fast enough. We must therefore press ahead with that.

Bank of England: Monetary Policy

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, as the noble Lord will be aware, it is Budget Day tomorrow. That is the day on which the Chancellor will re-express the remit for the Monetary Policy Committee. I am afraid the noble Lord will have to wait for 24 hours.

[Lord Higgins]

Does my noble friend agree that there is sometimes confusion between interest rate policy and monetary policy? Can he say what the Government’s policy is in relation to their own actions and those of the Bank of England as far as the quantity of money is concerned?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, as I said in my original Answer, operational responsibility for monetary policy is a matter for the independent Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, not for the Treasury.

Economy: Credit Rating

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that we were supposed to have this Urgent Question much earlier in our proceedings, and that if this does not happen the Whips should rise and say what is going on?

As far as the substance is concerned, does my noble friend agree that it is absolutely crucial that the Government should continue with their existing policy? The reality is that they have not managed to reduce the deficit as fast as we would have liked. The Labour Party is saying that the reduction is being done too quickly and by too much, but clearly the reason why we have had this reassessment of our position is that it has not been done as quickly as international opinion might feel would have been appropriate.

If we are going to take this attitude, it is essential that aggregate demand should be maintained. In that instance, a further increase in quantitative easing would be appropriate. However, we are in some danger of having economic management split between an unaccountable Monetary Policy Committee and the Treasury. Perhaps this point also should be taken into account.

[Lord Deighton]

I thank my noble friend for those observations. As for the timing of the Statement, I think that it was simply a matter of the earlier session not finishing on time. I, too, have been here for an hour and a quarter ready to talk about this Question.

On the economic substance, my noble friend raises a number of extremely important points. I do not think that we can evaluate the current economic situation in terms of a direct trade-off between growth and fiscal consolidation. The essence of the situation that we find ourselves in is that fiscal consolidation is an absolute prerequisite for recovery and for the confidence of the markets which allows us to borrow to finance this extremely high deficit. My noble friend is right that an array of other policy weapons is available to prosecute a growth agenda. That includes multiple supply-side reforms to make our economy more efficient, and the Government are fully embarked on those. An activist monetary policy plays an important part, but—I agree—within a constraint of managing very carefully any inflationary risk.

Banking: LIBOR and EURIBOR

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

My Lords, I absolutely accept the noble Lord’s observation that it is really a swingeing indictment of the financial system that a benchmark as critical as LIBOR—which is responsible for settling about $300 trillion-worth of transactions—could be manipulated in this way. Once this was uncovered, however, the Government have moved extremely swiftly, appointing Martin Wheatley, the chief executive-designate of the Financial Conduct Authority, to do a review. He came up with a 10-point plan, which has been implemented in full. The Financial Services Act was amended to make sure that LIBOR activities were brought within statutory regulation; we created a new criminal offence to ensure that it could be followed up in that way and the FSA has now been given the power to compel banks to participate in LIBOR setting.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, would my noble friend agree that the general public are somewhat bemused by the large sums of money involved in these transactions and are even more puzzled as to why there seem to be very few people who have been either prosecuted or convicted with penalties affecting the individuals concerned? Could my noble friend comment on that?

[Lord Deighton]

My Lords, with respect to the sanctions and penalties, I would point out that there are ongoing criminal investigations with the Serious Fraud Office. Three arrests were made at the beginning of the year, so it is clear that we are determined to follow through on picking up on criminal activity where that can be proven to have taken place.

Banking Reform

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the Government share the noble Lord’s support for the mutual sector. It is interesting that, over the past couple of years, the mutual sector has been doing very well: Nationwide and the Co-op have been growing rapidly, which we very much welcome. We also welcome some of the specific decisions that have been taken by banks such as Nationwide, under which people who want a mortgage will get preferential treatment if they have had an account with that mutual for some time before they asked for it. That situation was commonplace a generation ago.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, some aspects of this answer are certainly welcome, not least in respect of speeding up the clearing of cheques and so on. However, can my noble friend be a little clearer on precisely what the situation is? Are the Government coming down in favour of a ring-fenced arrangement, which will be electrified? If so, is it not important that we electrify the loopholes as well as the ring-fence? Can he make it clear, if the system really is effective, how the position of a bank operating under it will be any different from having a split between the two sides of the bank?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, on the first question, as to whether we are having full ring-fencing and whether we are electrifying the loopholes, I think, to take the analogy on, that if you have a proper, electrified ring-fence, there are no loopholes. First, the aim of the electrified ring-fence is to set up a very robust system. Secondly, the electrification not only allows the bank that has transgressed to be dealt with but will act as a very severe deterrent to prevent banks transgressing in the first place.

There is a rather long technical answer to his second question, which I am happy to give, but I suspect, given the time, that I will have to do it on another occasion.

Economy: Growth

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, because he always introduces an element of optimism in what has otherwise been a pretty grim debate. Like everyone who has spoken, I congratulate the Minister on his appointment and wish him well. I certainly share the views of those who congratulated him also on his role in the most successful Olympic and Paralympic Games ever. I particularly urge him not simply to be a government spokesman in this House but to take an active role in his department. This is not always easy, particularly regarding financial matters, where this House is inhibited in some respects. However, the issue is important because we now have not only a generation of professional politicians in the other place, but we are getting pretty close to a generation of professional Ministers, and an injection of more realism from these Benches on those who are serving as Ministers would be welcome.

One of the curiosities of the present situation is that we have to put the question of growth, investment and so on in the overall economic context. It is true, as all Cambridge economists would say—there are more around the Chamber—that it is difficult not only for economists to forecast the future but to forecast where you are. This is certainly true at the moment because we have the strange situation where we appear to have an economy that we are told is about to have a third dip but, at the same time, the stock market is not doing at all badly and employment is increasing rapidly. The answer to this is probably to be found in the fact that wage inflation is virtually non-existent and it would seem almost that the unions have come to the view that they should go more for an increase in employment, rather than sustaining their members’ living standards. This clearly has serious implications for what might happen in the future, but none the less, this appears to be the case. The trouble is—as the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, pointed out—that the implication of that is that productivity is actually going down in the circumstances I have just described, at a time when we certainly, as an economy, want to have productivity going up. Therefore, the answer has to be that we must do something important to encourage aggregate demand.

Perhaps I might add just one other word in reply to the comments of my noble friend on the Front Bench. He actually referred to a “national infrastructure plan”. Those who have been in this place or another place for a long while have nasty echoes of George Brown and his ill-fated national plan, but I am not clear whether my noble friend will find that this has capital initial letters in Hansard. Perhaps he might clarify whether it is his intention that it should do so. There may be some argument for such an approach in the present circumstances with regard to infrastructure, but it is absolutely clear that the Government must continue to press on with their deficit reduction plan.

I am now rather puzzled by the position of the Labour Party. We were told originally, “Well, the Government are doing it too fast and too soon”—the implication being that something ought to be done. It was clearly the case that one could not go on as one was going on at the time when we came into power. What is the position now? The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, with his usual reference to Keynesian multipliers and so on, seems to be saying that we should now take fiscal measures to stimulate the economy. In other words, he is saying that we should not cut the deficit but go on increasing it even more. He shakes his head; in that case, I am not clear where he stands on this issue. What does he want to do about the deficit? It is not apparent what he wants to do about the deficit, and whether it involves the multiplier as well. We look forward to some clarification in the wind-up speeches from the Front Bench.

The trouble is that if it is not possible to do it by fiscal measures one has to find other means of doing so, and lowering interest rates further is clearly not a possibility. Therefore, one inevitably has to resort to the question of quantitative easing. I share the qualms expressed by my noble friend Lord Lang and others about the effect of this on pension funds. The Treasury Committee is now, I gather, going to carry out a full report into quantitative easing, which will be helpful, but it does not seem to me that there is much alternative for the moment. It is certain that its impact is diminishing, but it seems to have some stimulating effect at the present time, which is something that we need in present circumstances.

Having said that, I am concerned about the fact that our monetary policy is confused and divided between the Treasury and the great Gordon Brown’s invention, the Monetary Policy Committee—a very unaccountable body. I am not at all clear that monetary policy is operating as it should. Until the innovation of quantitative easing, it was not a monetary policy at all: it was a Monetary Policy Committee without a monetary policy. All it had was an interest rate policy involving one interest rate. We are not clear as to how responsibility for overall economic management is divided between the Governor of the Bank of England—now incoming—and the Monetary Policy Committee on the one hand and the Treasury on the other. It is not clear to what extent there is a degree of co-ordination and—as I pointed out as the legislation was going through—they are working on two different forecasts. That is an extraordinary situation to find ourselves in. Having said that, I think it is important that we should continue to cut, but cuts must be made in a sensible way. Yesterday at Question Time, the issue came up about what is happening in south London, and the protests going on there on a large scale because of the proposal to downgrade the maternity unit at Lewisham Hospital. I have an interest in this, because my daughter was born in Lewisham Hospital. We went there because of its high reputation. Even more remarkably, her son was also born in that hospital because events happened much more rapidly than was expected; she had to drive 60 miles to get to the hospital and she and the baby arrived there at the same time. The hospital responded magnificently. To downgrade that hospital now would be a really appalling example of how not to do cuts—cuts made simply because another part of the NHS had overspent. It would be better to fire the people who overspent rather than affect Lewisham Hospital. I have digressed—but I am merely saying that I have a qualification in respect of my views on cuts. The cuts must be sensible and well judged.

On infrastructure, I would like to make two points. First, there is absolutely no point in having totally uneconomic infrastructure projects. In this context, whatever the political arguments may be on global warming and so on, to have a structure where the cost of the investment is to be met by imposing higher costs on existing consumers—some of whom may be dead before the new wind farms come in—is not a sensible way of proceeding. I am sure that my noble friend on the Front Bench, with his knowledge of microeconomics, will accept that if the pricing policy was right in the first place, loading the cost of the investment on top of that is certainly not going to give an optimum solution. But that tendency not to carry out a normal investment appraisal but to put the costs on the existing consumers appears to be happening with our normal, rather than high speed, railways. The regulators seem to have changed their view on what is the right way in which to make investment proposals in these large infrastructure areas. I hope that my noble friend in the Treasury will look carefully as to whether the regulators are really doing the job in this respect that they ought to do.

I gather that the Treasury Committee—of which I was chair for many years—has just made a report on the mini-Budget Statement. It says that it is important that the Chancellor should not create uncertainty with regard to his determination to reduce the deficit. I believe that that is the situation that ought to be avoided; it is important that we should remain resolute. At some stage, obviously, it will be possible to reverse the present policy, but that time has not come yet if we want to get growth in the economy.

Financial Services Bill

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Myners]

My Lords, I fear that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, might not have been listening to my noble friend Lord Eatwell. He supports the inquiry to be chaired by Mr Andrew Tyrie as well as the Wheatley review. I believe that the proposal of my noble friend is complementary to and necessary as an addition to those reviews.

Yesterday the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in the other place,

“we know what has gone wrong”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/7/12; col. 613.]

I do not think that the people of this country know what has gone wrong. With all respect to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, this is not simply a question of LIBOR. I first tabled a Written Question for the Minister about the manipulation of the LIBOR rate in March last year and got a very backhanded response from him; I have raised it several times subsequently. But this goes well beyond LIBOR. The lying and deceit around LIBOR manipulation that we know has taken place systemically across the banking industry—it is not limited to Barclays alone—is but a symptom of a wider cancer at its heart.

You can go to your bank manager to have your passport photograph signed. Banking was a profession held in high regard. It was associated with trust, integrity and prudence. How has that changed, and why? That is why we need a commission of review. The terms of reference of the Tyrie review are, as my noble friend said, extremely limited. They are ring-fenced and precise, so they do not ask the sort of questions that should be asked. Yesterday in this House the call was made for a review that would focus on the transparency, culture and professional standards of the banking industry. The Tyrie terms of reference do not look at the transparency, culture and professional standards that were called for by the speaker in this House—and that speaker was the Minister. We need a fundamental review of what has gone wrong in banking.

How can it be that a bank built on the Quaker traditions of Barclays can find itself in a position where three of its senior board members have resigned within 24 hours and where I confidently predict more will resign by the end of this week? How can we be comfortable with that? The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to Mr Marcus Agius, whom I know well and hold in extremely high regard. It seems as if Barclays has been involved in a car accident where Mr Agius was the passenger sitting in the back. Yesterday he resigned, taking the blame for the accident. Today Barclays has concluded that it is the driver who should take responsibility, and now Mr Agius has got back into the car, which he has to drive from the back seat. This is a state of complete chaos. How can a great British industry, one in which we have led the world, have got itself into such an awful mess?

To answer those questions, we probably need to go back to the 1980s to see how the transition has taken place. Tyrie and Wheatley are not going to do that. Their work should continue, but the call by my noble friend Lord Eatwell for a thorough, deep and considered evidence-based review of what has gone wrong in banking, and what we can do to ensure that it does not happen again, seems to be an undeniable case. I shall certainly support the amendment if my noble friend presses it to a vote.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, we should be grateful for the opportunity to have a debate this afternoon because it enables us to focus on what our priorities should be. We have essentially been considering two things: how wide an inquiry do we need and how urgent is it that it should produce results quickly? What has become quite apparent is that one inquiry is not going to be enough. What has happened is this: on the one hand we need a short-term inquiry, but on the other hand we need a strategic inquiry. We also need the kind of investigation which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has put forward, but in a sense it is a separate issue because the outcome of that inquiry will presumably be the prosecution of particular individuals. In no way would the noble Lord’s inquiry tell us how to reform the banking system. So that is something which is self-contained and separate.

We come then to the question of the best tactical answer. I fear that the position has been somewhat confused by the references to Mr Tyrie. Let me make it absolutely clear—I speak as someone who was the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee for 14 years—that I have the greatest respect for Mr Tyrie, who has been doing a magnificent job as chairman of the committee, which I understand is to take evidence from Mr Diamond this week. But the question then arises of whether Mr Tyrie should also be the chairman of the Joint Committee, the proposal put forward by the Government. I think that this confuses the matter. The shorthand around the use of the word “Tyrie” has actually become extremely confusing. Yesterday I expressed a view that I shall repeat now: to do the jobs both of chairman of the Treasury Select Committee and chairman of the Joint Committee is too much. It will distract from the normal work of the Treasury Select Committee, while the Joint Committee will need the full attention of whoever is appointed as its chairman.

I am not clear on how it suddenly became apparent that Mr Tyrie would chair the Joint Committee. My noble friend the Minister pointed out yesterday that the Joint Committee will presumably decide who its chairman should be. I would prefer Mr Tyrie to continue as chairman of the Treasury Committee because he is doing such a good job, and I believe that someone else should chair the Joint Committee. However, that will be a matter for him and the respective committees to decide. At all events, the Joint Committee is the right way to go as regards the immediate investigation and rapid conclusions on what needs to be done urgently. That leaves unanswered some of the more fundamental positions that need to be considered. The body which could most appropriately do that was suggested by the opposition Front Bench.

To summarise, leaving the separate Carlile issue on one side, the Treasury Committee should continue with its work in the normal way; the Joint Committee should consider the immediate actions that need to be taken as it unearths the problems, as no doubt it will; and there ought also to be a longer-running inquiry. There will not then be any accusation that we are kicking the matter into the long grass, and at the same time we will get rapid results on the tactical situation. In the light of your Lordships’ debate, it is becoming increasingly apparent that that structure is the right approach.

[Lord O'Donnell]

My Lords, I support the sentiments expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and believe that we need to handle the very important issues raised by the noble Lords, Lord Eatwell and Lord Myners. There is a way of managing all of this.

First, importantly, we have a lot of information already. We want an inquiry to establish the facts, but we need to bear in mind that we have MoJ, CFTC, and FSA reports on the LIBOR issue that have raised enormous issues. I would very strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile said, but with the noble Lord, Lord Howard, variant, if I might put it that way; that is, that these reports have raised serious issues of criminality. We need to investigate those issues quickly, with sufficient resources, and with all the power and vigour that we would use if this were some other form of crime. That process is crucial. It should happen straight away, and it should not be resource-constrained.

Secondly, the Wheatley report will be important specifically to the way in which we handle the LIBOR issue. It is urgent, and plenty of others would like to take this business away from us. The Wheatley report, which should be with us through the summer, will suggest some amendments to this Financial Services Bill. I particularly like the suggestion of LIBOR being a qualifying financial instrument, which might well get us through a lot of these issues.

We then come to the more general set of issues on what is wrong with banking and how we can restore confidence in it. Those are very important questions. In my maiden speech, I suggested that we should have a Joint Committee of both Houses chaired by the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee who would have authority and power. Given the experience of Members of this House, it could come up with some answers that would get past the problem of reputational issue. Both Houses acting together would command confidence and such a committee more generally at what emerges from the LIBOR case.

Some issues will emerge directly from the LIBOR case which will relate to our future banking reform legislation, touching on the whole question of splits and the like. That Joint Committee could guide us as regards the changes we would need. I am in favour of changes to that legislation and I would look at total assets rather than only at risk-weighted assets, and at total leverage ratios rather than only at what is proposed. However, that is a separate issue that we will come to later in this House.

FSA Investigation into LIBOR

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, if the noble Lord will hear me out, we know that there was attempted manipulation from the evidence that has already been made public. I do not know on what basis the American authorities have come to that conclusion, and it may just be semantics, but the authorities are currently investigating whether LIBOR was actually manipulated.

It is also worth bearing in mind that, in the case of Barclays, it was the dollar LIBOR rate and not the sterling LIBOR rate that was the subject of the attempted manipulation that has come out. I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Myners, that these investigations need to carry on, but we cannot come to any conclusion about the answer.

Lastly, I answered a question about the fine last week, but I will repeat it in summary. This is the largest fine that the FSA has ever handed down, which indicates the seriousness of this matter within a UK context—the US has a completely different approach to the way it imposes penalties. The most important and relevant point is that this is the largest ever fine in the UK handed down by the FSA.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords—

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am sure that the FSA will listen to the analysis given by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan; and if it has not already got to the bottom of it, it will take his points on board. The authority is acutely aware that it needs to press on, but the noble Lord, Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, has made it clear that it is very difficult, which is why the FSA seems to be taking the lead on this.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, it would seem that Barclays’ defence is, “We had to cheat in order to preserve our reputation”. That suggests that the bank is seriously misguided in the way it looks at these matters. Certainly there is a case for a parliamentary investigation, which I support. It is equally true that we should be absolutely clear that the terms of reference are the right ones for such an investigation.

If I may, I will make a very narrow point. As I understand it, the proposal is that the Joint Committee should be chaired by the Member for Chichester, Mr Tyrie, for whom I have the very greatest respect. However, as I was myself chairman of the Treasury Committee for some 14 years, I question whether it is appropriate that his energies should be diverted from the Treasury Committee, where he is doing an excellent job, by being chairman of this authority. This is too heavy a burden for one person, however talented, to take on, and we ought to consider that point.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, on my noble friend Lord Higgins’ first point, there were two distinct periods during which Barclays was found to have attempted its manipulation. The first period was before the financial crisis, when its traders appear to have been driven by pure greed and tried to drive rate up. The second period was during the financial crisis when the preservation of Barclays’ reputation seemed to be the main driver and it was attempting, it seems, to move the interest rate down. I think there were those two distinct motivations.

Regarding the committee chair, notwithstanding the suggestion that the chair of the Treasury Committee chairs the Select Committee, I would guess that the formal position is that the committee itself will decide who the chair will be. I imagine that this will be taken up either in the Motion itself, in which case your Lordships will have a chance to take a view on it, or the committee will decide who the chair will be in due course.