Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Hollick

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hollick (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the two amendments in this group. They address real flaws in the current arrangements. The comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, were interesting on whether the flaws are now covered by the codes of practice. The concern in the committee report to which the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, referred—I was part of that committee—was that there was no active and effective dialogue between the auditors and the regulators. Regulation requires as much light as possible to be shone on what is going on in the organisation being regulated. In part, that is to do with the provision of information and data—of which there are tonnes in banks. At another level, it is very important to give a perspective and a judgment. This goes to the heart of some of the problems.

First, and bluntly put, the auditors—as has been pointed out—are appointed, paid and retained because they work with the management of the bank. Their duty is to shareholders, of course. However, the reality is exemplified by Barclays, which had the same auditor for, I think, 240 years. It is very important that we underwrite the independence of the auditor. The statutory requirement to talk to regulators helps auditors have the necessary degree of independence so that they can inform the regulators of what they are concerned about.

The second issue is that of the accounts. As the noble Lord, Lord Flight, made clear, investors have a completely different set of accounts. They put IFRS to one side because it is incomprehensible and meaningless. It is completely pro-cyclical in banking, which is the most dangerous thing to be. The fund managers look at their own accounts, but of course if you sit on the board of a bank—as a number of Members of this House do—you see a different set of accounts as well. You see the management accounts about how the bank is trading. You look at the bankbook and try to assess the risks. Before IFRS came along, when times were good it was a practice for prudent bankers to say that some of the loans might turn bad and that it was necessary to put some provisions to one side. IFRS has stopped that practice, although we were told in our committee that IFRS is reconsidering the rules; its rules committee has recognised the shortcomings of IFRS. A Member of this House has also written a very good report which tries to get accounting back from being totally rules-based to being principles-based and asking: “Is this a going concern? Is it a true and fair view of accounts?”.

The audit firm that signed off Northern Rock to say that it was a going concern—when it was funded entirely by overnight money—made a clear misjudgment, shall we say. The bank’s own management accounts—and indeed the auditor’s own judgment—would have helped the regulator to look at that much more closely. It is therefore important that the Government think again on this. The argument about cost is not a real one; that is a bit of nonsense, to be blunt, because these sorts of accounts are published and provided to board members to review the performance of the organisation.

As for relying on expectation, we owe it to the taxpayers in this country to have rather clearer rules. Expectations and codes of conduct are all very well, and one would wish to have them clearly set out and published. However, in a matter as serious as this, it is very important that there is a legal requirement to do this. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, wishes that he had put one into the 1987 Act. The Government owe it to the taxpayers to think again on these issues.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, I am going to build on what has been said by the noble Lords, Lord McFall, Lord Barnett and Lord Hollick. Then I will make one suggestion in respect of Amendment 92, which I support. Comment has been made about the fact that the accountancy profession has got too concentrated for public benefit. It is altogether too cosily placed vis-à-vis the very largest banks and companies. The noble Lord, Lord Hollick, referred to Barclays using the same auditors for more than 100 years; it that is not a recipe for slack auditing, I do not know what is.

The noble Lord, Lord McFall, noted that many accountancy firms provide both auditing and consultancy services. Sometimes, the non-auditing services are more valuable than the auditing services, which is a crazy situation. It is a pity that the Bill does not address that because if, as auditor, you ought to be saying some things with “rigour”—the word quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, from an article by Mr Woolf—how can you avoid a deep conflict of interest? I suggest, and experience bears me out, that you cannot bring to the very difficult task of auditing the rigour that is on occasions necessary to bring a bank or a large company to heel and to ensure, as far as any audit can, that some of the disasters we have seen are thereby avoided.

As I say, I am sorry that we are not addressing that issue in this Bill. Perhaps it is not too late to table such a provision on Report. However, I fear that a great deal is lacking. I think I am right in saying that all the big four accountancy firms have been penalised or fined many millions of pounds in the past few years. I remember that in America, KPMG was fined more than $450 million for running fraudulent tax schemes for years on end. What happens to these firms’ reputation and business? Very little does, as far as I can see. I suggest to my noble friend Lord Lawson and his co-proposers of Amendment 92 that it is not clear beyond peradventure that the bank under consideration should not be present at these statutory meetings. It may seem an obvious common-sense point that you cannot have such a statutory meeting with somebody from the relevant bank being present. However, given the cynicism of our world, we should make that clear. Given that we are at a flexible stage of our consideration of the Bill, if Amendment 92 goes forward, I recommend that that provision be included in it.