Financial Services Bill

Lord Stewartby Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eatwell]

My Lords, the development of macroprudential regulators, the instruments for introducing macroprudential regulation, is a common theme in the UK, the European Union and the United States. Different models have been developed for the institution that is to be responsible for macroprudential regulation. In our own model, the Financial Policy Committee, we see what could be called a “central bank model”, where the alternative voices being brought to the table are to be represented by the independent members of the FPC. It will fall to them to challenge Bank of England house thinking and provide alternative perspectives. There is only a very small number of external members on the FPC and finding members with the experience and skills necessary to perform the role that we demand of them is, as has already been seen, very difficult, although at the moment we have an excellent group in the shadow FPC. An alternative model, which has been adopted by the United States Financial Stability Oversight Council, pursues a more stakeholder-oriented approach in which the appropriate voices from stakeholders actually have a direct role in the organisation of macroprudential measures within the United States.

Both the central bank model that we have pursued, which also applies to the European systemic risk board, and the stakeholder model have disadvantages. The key disadvantage of our central bank model is that we do not have enough diversity of opinion or access to new research and critical assessments of FPC measures that the stakeholder model might have. The problem with the stakeholder model is that the United States may find that its Financial Stability Oversight Council becomes mired in differences of opinion from different stakeholder interests and has difficulty in pursuing the coherent macroprudential policy that is required of it.

As we know, this whole area is, as I said earlier, an experiment—or, if the Minister prefers, a project. We are dealing with areas and matters that at present are uncertain. There is little agreed analysis or clear empirical assessment of how some of these tools will actually work. We will find out. We are going to experiment. We therefore need to harvest the widest possible spectrum of analysis. The amendment proposes that there should be a financial stability advisory panel, not a panel that is intimately involved in designing and implementing the measures. Those independent voices are provided by the independent members of the FPC but they are necessarily compromised by their role in dealing with very sensitive matters as they might have conflicts of interest if they have a wider role in the financial services industry. The financial stability advisory panel could contain individuals with such conflicts of interest because they would not have a role in actually managing the macroprudential organisation of the FPC.

The amendment suggests that we have this financial stability advisory panel providing that diversity of view from academics, perhaps from members of staff of international organisations such as the Bank for International Settlements, which is making a lot of the running in the development of macroprudential tools, and potentially from others who have particular skills in the analysis of systemic risk. It will be their responsibility to provide written advice to the FPC, prepare an annual assessment of the FPC’s performance, look at the effectiveness of individual measures and assess the effectiveness of particular directions and recommendations in the context of an annual report or assessment. This cannot do anything but good. It is simply an institutionalisation of the detailed examination, the variety of voices and the consideration of effectiveness that are so necessary in providing both coherence to the FPC and its general acceptance. A panel of this sort, given the responsibilities that are set out in the amendment, would add significantly to the effectiveness of the Financial Policy Committee. I beg to move.

[Lord Stewartby]

My Lords, I was interested to hear the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, on the nature of the work that will face the panel. It sounds like something that overlaps considerably with the Board of Banking Supervision in the late 1980s. Obviously that was working in different circumstances, but each of the bodies require, or required, people of an unusual stripe who combine a practical experience of banking, and the difficult areas that it brings with it, with a particular canniness in identifying areas where they think that things are not as they should be, particularly in cases where that is not always evident until later when events have already taken place.

Are the would-be members of the panel now shadowing the work that will be theirs in statutory form as a result of the Bill? It is terribly important to get the people involved carrying a great deal of weight and clout but at the same time having inquiring minds—something that will help us to ferret out areas that have been unsatisfactorily dealt with. I will not say more now, but I am pleased that some of the reasons for having a panel such as this—20 years ago or more it was called the Board of Banking Supervision, or the BoBS—have been recognised as important in today’s different but difficult circumstances.