Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [HL]

Lord Sharkey Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Sharkey]

19: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Composition of the Board of the PRA
In Schedule 1ZB to the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, after paragraph 9(b), insert “, and(c) the chief executive of the FCA.””

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[Lord Sharkey (LD)]

My Lords, the amendment does for the PRA what Amendment 7 did for the FPC. I can be very brief—perhaps even audible. The amendment relates to the PRA in its current form, which we will try to maintain by opposing Clause 12. The Treasury briefing note sets out the current composition of the PRA as the governor, the CEO of the PRA, the deputy governor for financial stability and appointments by the court with the agreement of the Treasury, so as to ensure a majority on the board of external members. The Bank website says that five members of the board are Bank officials; that the board has a majority of independent external members, including the CEO of the FCA and five others.

The requirement that the PRA board has a majority of external members is an important provision. Its purpose is clear: it is to protect against and counter overwhelming influence by the Bank. Unfortunately, whether there is really a majority of independent board members is open to significant doubt. It depends on whether or not, as the Bank asserts, the CEO of the FCA can properly be described as either external or independent. As I said on Monday when discussing the status of her membership of the FPC, the CEO of the FCA has, at best, a qualified independence, not to be compared with the true independence of the truly external members. She depends for her job on the confidence of the Chancellor and of the governor. Her organisation is, in many respects, controlled—or can be controlled—or constrained by the Bank or its organs. The summary sacking of her predecessor, Martin Wheatley, by the Chancellor, with, no doubt, at least the agreement of the governor, is a clear and dramatic illustration of just how much independence the CEO of the FCA has when it comes down to it.

When I raised the same point in the context of the FPC, the Minister disagreed. He asserted simply that the FCA was a completely independent body. The evidence for this is pretty thin, as others have noticed. As recently as August, the Adviser Lounge ran an article headlined:

“Financial advice review shows FCA is not independent”.

It concluded that the regulator can be pushed, both formally and informally, into enacting the Minister’s will. It quoted an historical example. It noted that the former Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, intervened directly in the FCA’s mortgage market review consultation in December 2010—and Grant Shapps was not even a Treasury Minister.

We need to make absolutely certain that the PRA as currently constructed has a majority of truly external members. These members are the equivalent to non-executive directors; their externality is equivalent to independence. The CEO of the FCA, on the contrary, is not by any reasonable test entirely independent of the Bank. The amendment does not remove her from the board of the PRA but simply defines her as external. This means that, in order to ensure the board has a majority of external members, one more genuinely external member will have to be appointed. This is a perfectly simple, reasonable and precautionary measure. I beg to move.

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[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for provoking this debate. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, I have not had the enjoyment of spending my morning looking at FSMA consolidated Acts, but I have been looking into this matter. I do not want to go on at length and repeat ad nauseam what I was saying on Monday. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, this comes down to a matter of independence. He is absolutely right to pinpoint that. Despite hearing the cases that he and the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, mentioned, I remain in no doubt that the FCA CEO should be counted as an external member. She is not an executive of the Bank and the FCA is an independent body entirely separate from the Bank.

Noble Lords should also be aware that the legislation further reinforces external representation on the new Prudential Regulation Committee, as compared with the PRA. The majority of external members, as has been said, is increased compared with the PRA board with at least seven external members, at least six appointed by the Chancellor in addition to the FCA CEO, compared with only five internal members: four officers of the Bank and one appointed by the governor. So, for the PRC, external members will be in the majority by at least two. This compares with a requirement for a majority of one on the PRA board.

It could be argued that if you use the power to add an extra deputy governor to the PRC, that majority of externals is lost. I would argue that the power to add an extra deputy governor to court and to the committee requires secondary legislation, so Parliament will have its say. Furthermore, Clause 1 provides that if secondary legislation is used to add a deputy governor to the PRC, it may also provide for an equal increase in the minimum number of members appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ensure a continued balance of internal and external members.

I shall leave it at that. I hope that the explanation I have provided satisfies the noble Lord and that he will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Sharkey]

I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for his support, and for reminding us that if the Government get their way in Clause 12, we will need to revisit the provisions governing the number and the definition of external directors of the new arrangements. I remain unconvinced that the CEO of the FCA can in any reasonable way be described as independent. The Government seem to be relying on the force of simple assertion rather than evidence, but I am sure we will come back to this on Report. In the mean time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 19 withdrawn.

Debate on whether Clause 12 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Sharkey]

My Lords, Clause 12 abolishes the existing PRA. It defines the Bank as the new PRA, exercising its function through the PRC. The key questions here are why, and what is the benefit? I asked these questions at Second Reading. The Minister, in his letter to me, received last Thursday, answered by saying:

“Bringing micro-prudential regulation more fully into the Bank will support the Bank’s aim of installing a unified culture and flexible and co-ordinated working across its twin aims, aims of monetary and financial stability”.

That is very nearly weapons-grade corporate speak.

I invited the Minister at Second Reading to say what that means in plain English and to give concrete examples of how it would operate. I again invite him to do exactly that. I also invite him, having explained what it means, to say why it is better than what we now have. Andrew Tyrie asked the governor a similar question on 20 October at the Treasury Select Committee. He made the point that the PRA had been successful and asked why this change was needed if the PRA was not “broke”—if it wasn’t broke, why change it? The governor said that no one had made that point to him but he agreed that the PRA had been successful.

Clause 12 brings about a significant change. It brings the PRA directly into the close embrace of the Bank. Despite unevidenced assertions to the contrary, it must reduce the practical and cultural independence of the PRA, and this is absolutely not desirable. Doing all this without a convincing or even intelligible reason is surely the wrong thing to do.

The Treasury briefing paper for the Bill hints at another reason for absorbing the PRA into the Bank—that is, to conform with the governor’s “One Bank” strategy aimed at breaking down barriers within the Bank,

“that could stand in the way of a unified culture and impede flexible and coordinated working across the Bank”.

There are two worrying things about that statement. The first is the “One Bank” strategy itself. As my noble friend Lady Kramer said at Second Reading, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards had many conversations about the importance of ensuring that,

“the Bank was not one single monolith and that there should be an opportunity for real challenge rather than groupthink”.—[Official Report, 26/10/15; col. 1073.]

The “One Bank” strategy appears to be in danger of doing exactly that—moving the Bank back to monolith status, suppressing opportunities for real challenge and recreating the conditions for groupthink.

The second worrying thing about the Treasury briefing note statement is the reference to breaking down,

“barriers that could stand in the way of a unified culture and impede flexible and coordinated working across the Bank”.

Leaving aside the question of whether a unified culture is always desirable, one has to ask, “What are these barriers?”. What barriers have been identified in the workings of the Bank with the PRA?

The position on Clause 12 is that the Government have simply not put forward any compelling reasons for the changes that it produces. We have seen no strong, or even fairly strong, or evidenced argument that either the current situation is unsatisfactory or that the proposed changes would be better. Absorbing the PRA into the Bank is an important and radical step. It should not be taken without strongly evidenced arguments. In the absence of such arguments, we are left with only weakening of the independence of a vital organisation, with no assurance of any real benefit. Like my noble friend Lady Kramer and my former noble friend Lord Flight, I would prefer to see the PRA more independent rather than less. However, if we cannot have a more independent prudential regulator, we can at least try to stop it becoming a less independent prudential regulator.

[Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)]

My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my interests as declared in the register of interests. It seems to me that these clauses come to the nub of bank regulation in the Bill. The real question that we are looking at is whether it is better to have a stand-alone regulator or one which is integrated into the Bank of England, albeit with Chinese walls, a separate committee structure, independent directors and so on. To answer that question we have to consider why the FSA failed. The FSA was set up very much as a stand-alone organisation with its own rulebook, structures and independence from both the Treasury and the Bank of England, yet it completely failed to identify the problems that were building up in the banking system prior to 2008 and was unable to take action if it did identify those problems. However, there is increasing evidence that it was not even aware that problems were being created.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, suggested that there are no problems with the PRA. That may well be true. Certainly, the PRA has operated well since it was created. I have had personal experience of dealing with people of excellent quality in the PRA and, indeed, of better quality than people in the equivalent posts in the FSA. However, I warn that the PRA has not been tested in the way that the FSA was. There has not been a major financial crisis since 2008. The PRA has not had to face the same problems. Frankly, we do not know whether the PRA would be able to cope with a crisis of the magnitude of 2008 or whether indeed it would suffer from the same problems that the FSA suffered from.

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Moved by

[Lord Sharkey]

21: Clause 18, page 15, line 19, at end insert—
“(2) The terms of the extension under subsection (1) shall not apply to those persons who fall within the definition of “relevant authorised person” in section 33 of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013.”

[Lord Sharkey]

My Lords, last night at 6.39 pm, the detailed impact assessment for the senior managers and certification regime that is part of the Bill appeared in my inbox. At 6.41, it was withdrawn and, at 6.42, it or some version of it was sent again. This was all a bit confusing. But the real problem is timing. It is simply not acceptable to send us an important impact assessment the night before we debate the matter. I have not been able to give this impact assessment anything but the briefest of glances. We need more time to review and think about the contents, but we can now do that only on Report. When we agree the SM&CR issue on Report, could the discussion be held under Committee stages rules? Perhaps the Minister could nod agreement or write to me nodding agreement with that proposal.

Part 2 introduces two very significant changes. It scraps the reverse burden of proof regime for relevant authorised persons, which are defined in the Treasury briefing note as banks, building societies, credit unions and PRA-regulated investment firms. The Bill replaces the reverse burden of proof with a test requiring the regulator to prove misconduct, which is the position we were in before, during and for five years after the crash. In this period, and under that test, no senior manager was jailed and financial misconduct did not cease. The Bill extends this new regulatory regime to all sectors of the financial services industry.

The sections of the Bill that deal with these matters are very complex. I am sure the Minister will say that this amendment has technical defects, and I am certain that he would be right about that. However, we are in Committee and this is a probing amendment. I hope that the intention of the amendment is clear. It does not challenge the extension of a new, less onerous SM&C regime to the wider financial services industry. It seeks to preserve the existing SM&C regime for those currently classified as relevant authorised persons. That is, it seeks to preserve the reverse burden of proof regime for banks, building societies and PRA-regulated investment firms. This would create a two-tier regulatory system. It would allow the regulatory regimes to be proportionate to the risks involved. Those institutions that did, and still can, threaten our financial system would be subject to a tougher regime, but those who cannot or are on the balance of probability unlikely to would be subject to the new lighter regime proposed in the Bill.

In an article in the Evening Standard on 15 October, the highly respected City journalist Anthony Hilton made the case for such a two-tier system, writing that,

“all banks, insurers and securities houses are not all equal in the damage they can do; some are much more equal than others. By extension, rules and regulations designed to impose mild restraint on the giants of the industry can amount to damaging overkill when applied to the typical smaller firm. The answer is a two-tier system of prudential regulation whereby those firms with the potential to put the system at risk are subject to much more intrusive supervision … Guy Jubb, global head of Governance and Stewardship at Standard Life Investments, has suggested something similar for his world”.

A two-tier system is what this amendment seeks to create.

There was considerable anxiety at Second Reading about the Bill’s abolition of the reverse burden of proof regime. In his reply and in subsequent correspondence, the Minister set out the reasons for this reversal. The first is that since the Government propose to extend the regime to all financial services, in the interests of fairness and regulatory coherence it would be vital that the regime be rolled out consistently across the industry. He said:

“it would clearly not be proportionate to apply the reverse burden of proof across the financial sector, including to the small organisations that will now make up the majority of firms which will come under the regime, and which pose more limited risks to market integrity and consumer outcomes”.—[Official Report, 26/10/15; col. 1081.]

The Minister singled out credit unions as an example of the kind of small firm that would suffer disproportionately under the reverse burden of proof regime, which I remind the Committee has not yet come into force. Here, I entirely agree with the Minister. Credit unions should never have been in the category of relevant authorised persons in the first place and should be removed. However, I disagree with all the other aspects of the Minister’s argument. It entirely ignores the different risk potentials of the major institutions and the about-to-be newly regulated firms, except to say that it would not be fair to impose the stricter regime on the whole sector. It would not be fair, but the stricter regime for relevant authorised persons was made law for all the good and necessary reasons advanced by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and accepted by Parliament and the Government. These good and necessary reasons, well rehearsed at Second Reading, are still entirely valid. The facts have not changed. The reverse burden of proof is still needed.

In evidence to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards in January 2013, Tracey McDermott, then director of enforcement and financial crime and now acting CEO of the FCA, stated that the inability to impose sanctions on senior executives was first and foremost due to the evidential standard required to prove their liability. She said that,

“the test for taking enforcement action is that we have to be able to establish personal culpability on the part of the individual, which means falling below the standard of reasonableness for someone in their position”.

That regime produced no convictions or charges against senior managers, and that is exactly where we will be again if we scrap the reverse burden of proof for senior managers in banks, building societies and PRA-regulated investment firms. The extension of the regulatory regime to less risky firms requires a lighter touch, but this does not imply that this same lighter touch should apply to much riskier organisations currently subject to the reverse burden of proof regime.

The Minister advanced two other reasons for removing the reverse burden of proof. The first is that, as Andrew Bailey asserted, it is leading to individuals and their advisers spending more time and resources on mitigating the risk of being held personally liable for breaches on their watch than on running their firms in a manner consistent with regulator’s objectives. This does not seem to fit with the details of last night’s impact assessment. It assesses the maximum cost benefit to large firms as 10% of current costs and as more likely to be 5%. This does not sound as though the lighter-touch regime will free much time or resources. In any case, Parliament’s intention was precisely that these people should spend more time and resources ensuring compliance with the rules. We know what happened when they did not do that. Mr Bailey went on to say that he sees the reverse burden of proof giving rise to a box-ticking mentality. Perhaps it may, but required behaviour often precedes and leads to cultural change.

Another point was raised by Mr Bailey. He said there has been noise around the reverse burden of proof that has been distracting future senior managers from complying with the spirit of other important aspects of the regime. He does not say how he knows he is not being gamed on both these points. I assume he would not deny that financial institutions attempt to game regulators and that he has been told of these things by bankers and others subject to the reverse burden of proof regime. How has he tested what he has been told? How does he guard against and discount obvious special pleading? Without this information, his arguments can have little force.

There is one other argument I have heard made, entirely understandably, about the reverse burden of proof: it runs counter to our strong legal tradition of “innocent before proved guilty”. There is ample precedent for this in law. The reverse burden of proof has been used in the Road Traffic Act 1988, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Terrorism Act, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the Trade Marks Act 1994, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Official Secrets Act. The House of Lords, sitting as the Law Lords, dealt with the issue in Sheldrake 2004, UKHL43. It made plain that each statutory provision must be considered on a statute-by-statute basis. The decisive factor before the courts is whether the reverse burden is necessary to ensure that the offences remain workable. Without it, these offences were not workable. That is precisely why we need, and is the justification for, the reverse burden of proof. That has been said and is the case here. This argument has not been advanced in our discussions so far, perhaps because the Minister is familiar with the current status in law of other examples of the reverse burden of proof. As noble Lords will know, the Telegraph reported on August 29 that Sir Eric Pickles is considering using the reverse burden of proof in his unexplained wealth orders, which I assume are a precursor to undeserved wealth orders.

The fact is that none of the Minister’s reasons for abandoning the reverse burden of proof stands up to scrutiny. We need the reverse burden of proof regime for systemically risky organisations for the reasons advanced by the PCBS and others. Life has not got better, financial misconduct has continued and no senior managers have been punished. The regime that makes punishment not happen is the regime, effectively, that the Bill wants to restore to banks, building societies and PRA-regulated investment firms. Our amendment is aimed at preventing that. The amendment does not interfere with the extension of the regulatory regime. It tries to retain the already approved and enacted regime for riskier, systemically dangerous firms and allow the lighter regime for those firms that are less risky and not systemically dangerous.

We need to be able to hold senior managers personally and directly accountable. As Senator Warren said:

“If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law”.

I beg to move.

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The intent behind this amendment is one we all share—to create a financial services sector in which people are held accountable for their actions. Much has already been done to achieve that. This Bill, as it stands, will improve transparency and accountability still further. This amendment, however, would add confusion and bureaucracy for no benefit. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Sharkey]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. It has been a very good one. It is clear that there is a strong division of opinion on both the desirability of a two-tier system and the reverse burden of proof regime. As the Minister said, these issues are both absolutely central to the regulation of our financial services industry.

It still seems to me that Parliament was right the first time. After a thorough and comprehensive investigation, it was right to put the reverse burden of proof regime into law. It was right to conclude that, if we did not do that, we would remain unable to hold senior managers effectively to account.

We have two categories of financial service organisations—those that constitute, or may pose, a threat to our financial stability and those who cannot pose such a threat. I agree with the Minister that we need a proportionate regulation and that what is proportionate for one of these categories is not proportionate for the other. I accept the difficulty in drawing the line. However, I remind the Minister that we have already drawn the line. The previous Act drew a very clear line. I do not think that we have resolved anything today but it was good to have the arguments in play. I look forward to discussing this issue further on Report under, of course, Committee stage rules. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.