Financial Services and Markets Bill

Debate between Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Lilley

Committee stage
Monday 20th February 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to start this fourth group on day five of Committee. As it is the first time that I have stood up today, I declare my interests in financial services as set out in the register.

I will speak to my Amendments 123, 129, 130, 132, 138 and 139; I thank my noble friend Lady Noakes for co-signing them. In essence, what they try to get at is pretty simple: to enable the CBA panels to be effective in the mission they purport to be set up to achieve.

I present to the Committee a new financial instrument: the ISA. Noble Lords might think that they are familiar with the ISA, but this ISA is “independence, scrutiny and accountability”, which we have heard so much about today and previously in Committee. I gift this particular ISA to my noble friend the Minister. Treat it as a woodworking router or some such device. If we take independence, scrutiny and accountability and apply them throughout the Bill, will she agree that, if current clauses do not stack up, they should be kicked out, improved and changed before Report?

With the CBA panels we currently have a conceptually useful form of ISA approach. However, the difficulty is that, as we have heard with so many other provisions in the Bill, as currently constructed they are the plaything of the regulator, again enabling the regulator to mark its own homework—or, even more so, to simply respond to whatever the CBA panels might say with, to put it in common parlance, “Whatevs”.

Importantly, rather than, for example, the membership of the panels, their agendas and outputs being down to the regulators, this suite of amendments can, in effect, empower a CBA panel to do its job effectively for all our benefit. Consider the membership: would it not be good if at least some of those members came from the sectors, with clear, recent and relevant expertise to bring to bear on the matters at hand?

If Amendment 123 and other amendments in my name—and others in this group, which all have a similar purpose—were agreed, it would enable these panels to operate far more effectively. The panels could also take a cumulative view on the impact of regulatory change. They could have a power of pre-regulatory scrutiny to consider the impact and force the regulator to think again before such regulations are brought into being. They could look at and opine on the overall economic impact of regulatory change. Having such an approach would make it far clearer and more transparent for all to see, when the costs are out there, whether there is necessarily any benefit from a particular change.

When my noble friend the Minister responds, will she agree that the CBA panels are a good thing, but it would be a great thing to fully enable and empower them to pass the ISA test? I beg to move.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I did not speak on the previous group of amendments, but I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Forsyth and the consensus of speakers said on that issue. I also strongly support what my noble friend Lord Holmes has spelled out, in not only proposing his amendment but providing an overview of this whole group.

We all agree that regulators must meet the objectives set by Parliament, but should do so in a cost-effective way, without erring, as regulators can, on the side of overburdensome regulation that makes life simpler for them without consideration of the costs to others. As drafted, the Bill requires both the FCA and the PRA to have two panels that undertake cost-benefit analysis. That is excellent but, as with much else in the Bill, it allows the regulators to mark their own homework or, at least, to appoint most of the panel of examiners who will mark their homework for them.

My Amendments 124 to 128 and 133 to 137 do, in essence, three things. They ensure, first, that all the members, not just the chair, are appointed by the Treasury rather than by the regulators; secondly, that they are independent; and, thirdly, more specifically, that they are not employees of the FCA or the PRA. I hope they find acceptance from the Government and this Committee. They are not contentious and are quite simple. They are within the spirit of the Bill, but simply tighten it up and make sure that what the Government appear to want is achieved without allowing the regulators to take over the process and run it in their own interest.