Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [HL]

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome this Bill. I am only going to concentrate on one aspect: diversity, because the Bill gives us an important opportunity to solidify the Government’s commitment to promoting real diversity in the financial services sector within legislation. A properly functioning, healthy and genuinely consumer-focused financial sector requires a broad range of different types and sizes of financial institutions operating in it to drive competition and financial resilience. This range of institutions should include customer-owned financial mutuals such as building societies, credit unions—as the right reverend Prelate has mentioned—and mutual insurers and friendly societies.

I recognise that, in the annual remit letters to the PRA and the FCA, the Government give a commitment to aim for, and follow up, diversity of provider and that is helpful, but it would be far better if it were put in legislation. I do not need to remind your Lordships of the difference between the mutual sector and the plc sector. One of the principal differences is the methodology of raising capital, whereby plcs can go to the market but mutuals have to raise organic capital. Your Lordships will be aware of the Private Member’s Bill that I took through in the last Session, which was the beginnings of an easing up on how the mutuals can raise capital. That was the Mutuals’ Deferred Shares Act 2015, but there is a long way to go still.

Why is it so important that this be put into legislation? There are two reasons. First, diversity increases the effectiveness of competition. After all, competition creates a better consumer environment in financial services through choice and so forth. Secondly, it makes the whole system a degree more resilient. We saw that in the recent financial crisis. Of course, out of it flows competition, which is helpful. One gets a superior service—and the evidence is there—from the mutuals. There are fewer complaints, and the evidence is there for that as well. Interestingly, one gets more competitive interest rates. What I found most persuasive is that, between 2012 and the end of June 2015, building societies provided no less than £52 billion of net new lending for mortgages. The rest of the mortgage market provided £7 billion. That is £52 billion from the mutuals and £7 billion from the plcs. That in itself is a demonstration of the importance of the mutual movement.

It goes wider than that. We have already heard about the great inclusion that comes from credit unions. There is a gap between the plcs and the high-cost providers. It is in that area that the credit unions are playing a key part. I submit to your Lordships that there is better conduct all round, more stable profitability and a lower risk appetite in lending; and they are, and remain, very efficient operations.

The thought that may be going through the mind of my noble friend on the Front Bench is, why do we have to put this into law? I submit to the House that, at this point in time, as we review the Bank of England and the financial sector, one size fits all is not acceptable. There were too many incidents in recent times where, as a last gasp, after much representation, either the European Union or our own Treasury suddenly remembered that there is a mutual sector. The fact that the mutual sector is a very important part of our financial sector should be right up front. What I and others in the mutual movement will be asking for is an environment where all types of firms can operate on a fair basis with regulations that are proportionate and appropriate to them, rather than this one-size-fits-all approach.

I should mention to my noble friend that I will be tabling an amendment to the Bill. It is important, but all it would do is impose a duty on the FCA and the PRA to consider models of ownership, such as mutual societies and firms of different sizes, when formulating any policy changes. I very much hope that when I have finished drafting it properly, it will find favour with my noble friend.

General Elections: Peers’ Exclusion from Voting

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Naseby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals they have to review the exclusion of life Peers from voting at general elections.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to review in this Parliament the long-established legal incapacity that prevents Peers who are Members of the House of Lords voting in a general election.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Is this not extraordinary when society is calling for votes at 16 and for felons; when every single Member who is a life Peer in your Lordships’ House has already voted in a general election; and when not one of the 189 upper Houses in the IPU precludes Members from voting? Has not the time come for my noble friend to recognise that it is time for a change? The claim that a Member of the House of Lords already has a voice in Parliament, and that therefore it is right to deprive him or her of having that voice heard through an elected representative in the Commons, no longer has validity as we do not have a voice on money Bills—the very central feature of our democracy, epitomised by “no taxation without representation”.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, is a Conservative and has taken very Conservative views on the reform of this House. I would have hoped that he would therefore agree with the statement of Lord Campbell, as Lord Chief Justice in 1858, that by,

“an ancient, immemorial law of England … Peers sat in their own right in their own House, and had no privilege whatsoever to vote for Members to sit in the other House of Parliament”.—[Official Report, 5/7/1858; col. 928.]

Ministerial Visits: Travel Costs

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think ministerial visits that include some party-political role have taken place in all the years of any Parliament. Every time I drive past the Humber Bridge, I am reminded that previous Labour Governments have on occasions used quite substantial gifts of public expenditure to influence the outcome of elections in particular constituencies.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, is it not a fact that if this was a genuine Question, my noble friend’s department should have been informed of it so that he could give a proper Answer? This is just party-political.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there are proprieties and the propriety and ethics team within the Cabinet Office monitors them. Labour Members of this House may be interested to know that there have been a number of complaints by Liberal Democrat MPs about Conservative Ministers visiting their constituencies without prior notice, and at least one from a Conservative MP about a Liberal Democrat Minister visiting her constituency. I am glad to see that some Conservatives are nervous about things like that.

Sri Lanka: Presidential Elections

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Naseby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the conduct and result of the presidential election in Sri Lanka, and of the policy statement made by Mr Maithripala Sirisena, the newly elected Executive President.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as chairman of the All-Party Group on Sri Lanka.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we commend Sri Lanka’s electoral commission for its conduct of the election and all Sri Lanka’s political parties and people for accepting the final result and committing to the peaceful transfer of power. However, we also note the view of Commonwealth observers that the election contest fell short of key benchmarks for democratic elections. We welcome President Sirisena’s early commitment to good governance and to working with all international partners. We stand ready to help the new Government implement their commitments.

[Lord Naseby]

Does my noble friend agree that it is greatly to be welcomed for any democracy to have an 80% turnout and, as he says, to have carried out an election so well? Is he also aware that, on the back of that election result, the new President Sirisena—supported by all the minorities, including the Tamils—has pledged to have a revitalised domestic human rights inquiry into alleged war crimes, possibly using the missing persons commission, with two highly respected Britons in Desmond de Silva and Geoffrey Nice? On top of that, he has stated clearly that there will be independence of the law and the judiciary, and media freedom. Against that background, will Her Majesty’s Government give a commitment to give forth the hand of friendship and to give this new all-party Government time to implement the pledges that they have made?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are entirely ready to give that commitment. The Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have already sent messages. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, will be aware that the new Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, is known to many people within his own party, as his party is associated with the Conservatives on an international basis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that has been the position of our Government for the past year. Of course, there are some sensitive issues of national sovereignty. The noble Lord may be aware that there are even some people in the United Kingdom who take objection to international organisations looking at human rights issues within this country.

[Lord Naseby]

Is my noble friend aware that, on that last point, both India and Australia stand foursquare with the sovereign Government of Sri Lanka; that, yes, they do need an enhanced domestic enquiry; and that perhaps they can work in tandem with Europe, but that both the former Government and the present Government have made it quite clear that they are not willing to take part with Europe?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am well aware of the previous Government’s resistance to the UN inquiry. I hope that the new Government, as they get under way, will take a more generous approach to the UN investigations.

Sri Lanka

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Naseby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking in response to the European Court of Justice verdict on 16 October and its conclusions in respect of restrictive measures currently in place since the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was proscribed by the European Union in 2006 and by the United Kingdom in 2000.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are studying the implications of the ECJ judgment and considering appropriate next steps. The UK is committed to maintaining an EU listing. The court’s decision was based on fundamental procedural grounds, but the court rejected the LTTE’s argument that it could not be listed as a terrorist organisation because of its involvement in an internal armed conflict. The UK condemns the Tamil Tigers as a brutal terror organisation, and it remains proscribed under UK law.

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that his Answer will be greeted with a great sigh of relief by nearly all the Sri Lankans who live in the United Kingdom and, indeed, virtually all the citizens of Sri Lanka? However, is he also aware that this coming Thursday there is to be a rally at ExCel to celebrate the life of the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Mr Prabhakaran, and the other Tamil Tigers, and to raise money for Eelam? Will my noble friend bring this to the attention of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police? It seems to me that this is covered by the proscription. Frankly, if the terrorism Acts mean anything, this particular rally should be stopped.

Census 2021

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Naseby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in relation to the next census due to take place in 2021, whether they have now rejected the possibility of replacing the traditional census format.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the value of the census but believe that it is outdated in its current form and could be more effectively and more cheaply delivered. Decisions about its future after 2021 will be announced in the usual way but the Government agree with the conclusion of the Public Affairs Select Committee that the census needs to change.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Has my noble friend read the Economist of 5 April? It said:

“Britain’s decennial population count has been saved. Now make it work better”.

The Office for National Statistics also stated in March that it,

“recognises that special care would need to be taken to support those who are unable to complete the census online”.

In the light of both those statements, can my noble friend tell the House what safeguards there are to ensure that the roughly 20 million who are not literate online, and the half a million who were left out from the last census, will be able to take part in this new census?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are of course keen to encourage people to respond online. The paper-based census takes a great deal of time to analyse and transpose. It was some 16 months from the last census in 2011 until the first data became publicly available. If more people do it online, that could all be done a great deal more quickly but in 2021, although we already understand that 80% of households now use the internet daily, there will of course be support from the usual recruited field force to assist those who do not use online materials.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I had the privilege of serving on the Bill committee under the superb chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I should also like to pay tribute to the clerks who backed us up. They did a superb job on a very tight schedule—we were given the best part of just over 12 weeks. The Government set us the target of reporting by Christmas. We stuck to that target and I think we did as good a job as any committee could hope to do in that time span. We recognised that this is a very important part of the Government’s programme. I pay tribute to the Ministers who gave evidence to us. I commiserate with the Minister who will take the Bill through in all its detail, but it is a very important part of the Government’s legislation and one that I greatly welcome.

However, something changed en route and it appears that, in reality, we looked at only two-thirds of the Bill at best. As someone who has been Chairman of Ways and Means in the other place, the situation jars with me when colleagues from all sides have worked extremely hard to take evidence, to listen to it, to reflect on and question it, and have proposed to the Government of the day that certain changes should be made. In fairness, the Government respond very positively in almost all areas to the committee’s evidence and recommendations. However, we then discover in Committee that a number of new clauses appear on the horizon, which get a fairly peremptory examination. Even more surprising, we discover on Report that new clauses appear in the Bill.

I must say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that, in all conscience, the Government are not being fair to the public, who justifiably want to give their voice on clauses that come forward, and I do not think the Government are being fair to Parliament as a whole. Inevitably, I suspect, that will mean that the Committee stage will take rather longer here than it otherwise would. Looking back on the previous Session, I seem to remember that we had to break early because there was no work to be done. The same applied at the other end. So I question why, when we had a perfectly good, succinct, tight Bill, the decision was taken to add other bits. Was it that certain departments of state were a bit slothful in coming forward or was it that Ministers got a little too enthusiastic? In future, I hope that there will be an annual Bill that is tightly drawn. As the noble Lord said in his introductory comments, it is the deregulatory dimension that we all want in Parliament, rather than the repositioning of existing legislation. I hope that can be really tightly drawn and stuck to. That way, across government as a whole, we would be doing the public a great service.

I will just mention three other areas. First, in the Law Commission, there is a body to review laws that are out of date. We took evidence and, frankly, we were somewhat aghast at how long it took to do its job. Parliament, particularly Ministers, should be putting pressure on the Law Commission to move faster. The Law Commission said to us that it did not have the resources to do it. If it is beneficial to the public, particularly the public purse, Ministers and the Law Commission need to sit down and find a way of making what is called the SLRs work better. We said in our original report that there should be an annual SLR Bill. I do not need an answer today—my colleagues and I would like the answer in writing—but my question is: have there been consultations with the Law Commission and, if so, what were the results of those deliberations?

Secondly, we received evidence from BALPPA, which regulates the leisure park industry in our seaside towns up and down the country. It gears up its programme of events, et cetera, to the school holidays. We questioned the association quite deeply because the Bill proposes that we should deregulate school terms. I am a grandfather, and there must be other grandfathers here, and fathers. Honestly, what we really want is predictability. If you have a boy and a girl, you want to know that they and their friends will be on holiday at the same time. I hope that we can have another look at that. Certainly, if you look at the evidence from the USA, where they deregulated around Labor Day, absolute chaos flowed and it adversely affected the tourism industries. I ask the Minister: has there been any economic assessment of the impact of deregulating school holidays on tourism jobs in the seaside areas? I think that is important.

My third point concerns the economic growth duty, which I spoke about at some length in the committee. I believe it is absolutely fundamental that every department of state thinks about the economic impact of what it does. That applies to the whole lot. We had what I would call some howls of protest from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, saying that we would be interfering with its role in life; in particular, it might be struck off the list in Europe. I totally fail to see how it would interfere with any of the human rights bodies if we—society—asked them to reflect at length on the impact of anything they do, propose or criticise. That is what we recommended in our report and it seems entirely justifiable from society’s point of view.

Voting: Young People

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are conscious that this is a long-term problem. The number of young people voting in elections has been going down for the past 25 years. When I was drafting my party’s manifesto for the 1997 election, I remember being told by a number of people in my party that we had to recognise that fewer young people voted than older people. That problem has been growing and it is still growing. With schools, students forums, funding a number of organisations, and working with Bite the Ballot and others, we are doing our utmost to mitigate that. From June this year we are also introducing online registration, which we hope will help young people find it easier to register.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Bearing in mind the Electoral Commission’s recent report on voter registration fraud, what safeguards are there to ensure that only those students at university who are eligible to vote in our national elections are the ones who register? In particular, what care is being taken to ensure that postgraduates on a one-year course, who may be eligible to register, do so but are taken off the register when they leave?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I suspect that a number of us in this Chamber are registered in two different places and have been for many years. Many students are registered in two different places, at their home and at their university. In all matters of electoral registration we have a balance to consider between keeping fraud to a minimum and doing everything that we can to encourage all British citizens to register.

Electoral Fraud

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Naseby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the recommendations of the recent Electoral Commission report Electoral Fraud in the UK, what action they propose to take to tackle electoral fraud.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are carefully considering the Electoral Commission’s report and recommendations and will respond in due course. We are clear that any changes to the electoral system should be proportionate and not impose unnecessary barriers to participation by legitimate voters.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome that Answer, as far as it goes, and pay tribute to the work of the Electoral Commission. However, are there not three key dimensions to its report: first, the integrity of the registration; secondly, ensuring that the person voting is the person who is on the register; and, thirdly and lastly, the accuracy of the count? I have had the privilege to win elections by 179 and 141 votes. Against that sort of background, can my noble friend give a commitment that there will, in the next Session of Parliament, be legislation on at least all these three dimensions of electoral law?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not sure how one would legislate on the accuracy of the count. We have a whole system of poll watching, which noble Lords are all well aware of and which most of us, I am sure, have taken part in many times, to check the accuracy of the count. On the question of moving towards individual registration, the introduction of the national insurance number as a verifier is intended as a check on who is being registered. On the question of personation and checking on those who turn up, we are watching that very carefully and are now checking with police officers on reports. All the evidence we have is that the level of personation is extremely low.

Public Services: Private Sector Companies

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I hope you will accept that there is, to some extent, a difference between the relationship that the Government have with water companies and energy suppliers, which have regulators, and the direct contracts that the Government have with particular suppliers such as Serco and G4S. The concerns that we have at present over Serco and G4S are widely known. The Government are conducting a review of contracts with Serco and G4S across the board.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Does my noble friend recall that, prior to 1979, hundreds of local authorities had direct labour departments building council homes and carrying out maintenance at a massive loss of billions of pounds to the local ratepayers and the taxpayer in general? In 1979, very early on, those councils were prevented from doing that and the private sector construction industry was brought in to build those flats. Is that not a better way forward, and has that not been proven over the years?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think we have discovered yet again that there is no perfect way of providing goods and services and that each model has its own advantages and disadvantages. The Government are currently doing their best to encourage the development of mutuals. Some weeks ago I went round the mutual housing association operating in Bradford, and it was doing a superb job, in particular in training apprentices. But of course there are good examples and bad examples in almost every sector.