Financial Services and Markets Bill

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd March 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I have put my name to two of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, in this group: Amendments 243A and 243B, which would require the super-affirmative procedure to be used. I have not added my name to Amendment 241G. I am in complete sympathy with the call for Parliament to be able to amend statutory instruments; I pay tribute to the work done by the committees chaired by my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. They have highlighted the dangerous shift to skeleton legislation with the resultant reliance on secondary legislation, which has inflicted great harm on Parliament’s ability to scrutinise and hold the Executive to account.

On the other hand, I recognise that this is a large issue that needs to be taken forward at a high level within both Houses of Parliament, and also of course with the Government. I do not believe that this Bill is the right place to start that process, although I do believe that we need to find a way of progressing the dialogue to find a way forward. I am of course concerned about the parliamentary processes around the many statutory instruments that will come under the powers in this Bill. The super-affirmative procedure is certainly better than the ordinary affirmative procedure, which is why it has my support.

In adding my name to these amendments, I am in fact hitching a ride on them in order to raise some wider issues about the statutory instruments that will come forward once this Bill is made law. This is an issue that should probably have been debated earlier in Committee but I have only recently been made aware of it. I have given my noble friend the Minister only a very small amount of notice of the nature of my concerns; I accept that she may not be able fully to answer at the Dispatch Box today.

The amendments focus on parliamentary oversight of legislation being brought in by statutory instrument. What I think we have not focused on is whether there will be adequate consultation by the Treasury before the statutory instruments are laid in Parliament. Many of the statutory instruments will of course be uncontroversial in the sense that they will merely recreate the EU law in a UK-based framework for the rules that will then be made by regulators.

However, it is entirely possible, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said, that the statutory instruments will contain significant changes from EU law. Clause 4, which allows the restatement of EU law, can be used to incorporate changes to the law within the huge range of possibilities that are allowed for by Clause 2(3). There is no requirement in Clause 4 for the Treasury to consult anyone at all before laying these statutory instruments. This is in stark contrast to the regulators, who have very clear statutory obligations to consult in respect of any rules they will be laying under the terms of the statutory instruments that give them the power.

In addition to Clause 4—this is the actual example that has come to my attention—the Treasury might choose to use the new designated activities power in Clause 8 to set up the replacement regulatory regime under UK law. As with Clause 4, the use of the Clause 8 power does not require the Treasury to consult anyone at all. The example that has been brought to my attention concerns the prospectus regime. I am indebted to the briefing provided to me by a partner in one of the Magic Circle law firms.

As part of the Edinburgh package, the Government published a policy note and a draft statutory instrument on how they intended to replace the EU prospectus rules. Put simply, the designated activities regime will be used to create the new prospectus regime when the existing EU law is repealed. The publication of the draft statutory instrument and the policy note was well received because it allowed those who specialise in this territory to get to grips with the proposed legal framework. Although the policy note was clear that the drafting was not final, it was not clear whether there would be a proper consultation on the new regime.

By way of background, there was a policy intent to deal with the issue of mini-bonds in the light of the London Capital & Finance scandal; that policy is, of course, uncontroversial. The Government were clear in their policy note that they intended to affect retail investors only and did not intend to cover things that were regulated elsewhere. It appears, however, that the chosen vehicle of relevant securities, as defined in the draft statutory instrument, also captures things with no likely impact on the retail market, including—somewhat incredibly—over-the-counter derivates and some loans, securities and financial transactions. I believe that this analysis has been made available to the Treasury via various players in the wholesale financial markets.

Although I understand that communications are constructive, there is a fundamental problem emerging: the so-called illustrative statutory instrument now seems to have morphed into a pre-final document on which no formal consultation will be held. This is important, given the significant widening of the reach of the proposals, well beyond the existing prospectus regime. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could set out how the Government see the next steps for the prospectus statutory instrument and whether formal consultation will occur. I hope that she will be able to respond not only on the particular issue of the prospectus statutory instrument but, more broadly, on the extent to which the Treasury will consult across the range of replacement EU law when it brings that law forward.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as stated in the register.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, on finding a way to amend statutory instruments. If it really is possible to change what noble Lords have always believed about SIs, that is welcome news indeed. As the noble Lord says, this procedure would be used only on the rare occasions when your Lordships’ House or another place considered it vital.

I support the noble Lord’s Amendments 243A and 243B, to which my noble friend Lady Noakes has added her name. These would create a super-affirmative category of approval process, introducing a higher bar but only after a resolution is made by either House of Parliament. I also agree with the points made by my noble friend on the prospectus directive and other matters. I support all these amendments.

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Moved by

[Viscount Trenchard]

246: Clause 78, page 90, line 32, at end insert—
“(4A) The Treasury must make regulations under subsection (3) so as to bring section 1 and Schedule 1 into force for the purposes of revoking, within the period of two months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, the provisions mentioned in that Schedule connected with Directive 2011/61/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2011 on Alternative Investment Fund Managers.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that the retained EU Law which replaced the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive and associated legislation will cease to have effect no later than two months after the passage of the Bill.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

I have tabled Amendment 246 to explore the Government’s willingness to move more quickly to take advantage of our new regulatory freedoms. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Lawlor for her support as she added her name to the amendment. The alternative investment fund managers directive is perhaps the most striking example of an EU regulation that was imposed on this country in the face of strong opposition from the City, the Government and industry at the time. In 2008, Charlie McCreevy, then the EU’s internal market commissioner, assured the industry that the EU would not regulate the alternative investment funds industry, which should be left to member states to regulate or not as they chose. A 2014 report by Dr Scott James for King’s College London, sponsored by the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, tells the story of AIFMD very well.

Contrary to Mr McCreevy’s intention, Manuel Barroso, then president of the EU Commission, intervened in 2009 to push for an alternative investment fund managers directive in order to secure support, principally from France and Germany, for his reappointment as Commission president. The initial draft was therefore prepared without the usual preparatory work and led to harmonised regulations covering disparate organisations from the venture capital, private equity, hedge fund and property fund sectors, lumped together by the Commission as alternative investment funds. The Treasury’s initial response was weak, and the FSA was suffering from a lack of confidence and brain drain in anticipation of being broken up.

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[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I would not want to pre-empt the approach for any specific area of regulation, but the principles on which we are seeking take forward this work are about looking at regulation and ensuring that we use the opportunities outside the EU to take the right approach to that regulation for the UK. My noble friend talked about the different perspectives taken by regulators in the different jurisdictions. That is right. The aim of moving from retained EU law is not simply to transcribe it into UK law but to ensure that it is well adapted to our own circumstances, too. However, I do not think that I can helpfully pre-empt the approach in each area in this debate, but only talk about some of those wider principles.

I was talking about the intention to move all retained EU law into the FSMA model. We have set out our priorities for the first areas in which we are seeking to do this. The Government have not to date seen evidence that the reform of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive is a widely shared priority across the sector. However, the Treasury would of course welcome representations on this point. We are keen to engage further with industry and understand the sector’s priorities as we work to repeal retained EU law associated with alternative investment fund managers over the medium term.

The FCA also recently issued a discussion paper to consider whether wider changes to the asset management regime should be undertaken in future to boost UK competitiveness using the Brexit freedoms introduced by this Bill. This will allow the Government and the regulators to consider what replacement is appropriate for the legislation before commencing its repeal. For these reasons, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her reply, but I confess that I find it rather disappointing. I am grateful for the support that I received from my noble friend Lady Lawlor, who talked more than I had and expanded on what I had said about the emergence of the directive and the reasoning behind it at the EU level at the time. As she so well explained, the AIFMD system was always seen, not only at the outset but since then, to be unsuitable for the UK system.

My noble friend the Minister said that the Government have decided gradually to approach the question of repeal and reform of EU law—certainly, very gradually, I would suggest. As she rightly pointed out, this sector is hugely important and of huge value—she mentioned the figure of 122,000 jobs—to the City and the economy as a whole.

However, the Minister said that the financial services industry is underpinned by healthy and proportionate regulation, which I cannot agree with. I tried hard to explain the reasoning, as I understood it, for the introduction of this directive, and I tried to argue that it is not proportionate at all; it is widely regarded as being disproportionate.

The Minister said that there is no evidence of a widely held belief that the regulation underpinning this sector needs reform or revocation. I strongly question who she has been speaking to. In the last week, I have spoken to a very senior regulator of one of the Crown dependencies, who completely endorsed what I said: it is just not true to argue that this regulation is proportionate. The City has been hugely damaged over the years that the AIFMD regime has been in force. The Minister talked about 122,000 jobs, but how many more would there have been had we not, wrongly and unnecessarily, shackled this innovative sector of our financial services industry with this unnecessary, bureaucratic, cumbersome regulation, introduced entirely for political reasons?

I do not accept what the Minister said: that this would undermine the UK’s reputation. The UK’s present reputation, in the IOSCO and among other financial services markets, is that it has become steadily more bureaucratic. I talk to a number of other regulators, and I have technically been a regulator: I was the first non-Japanese to be appointed to the board of the Japan Securities Dealers Association, which has statutory, regulatory powers.

I very much hoped that the Minister would at least say that this is one sector where the Government recognise that there is disproportionate regulation, rather than argue that it is proportionately regulated, which I am convinced it is not. This would have been an opportunity to improve the City’s competitiveness. The listings review recently conducted by my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford contains many instances of areas where the Government should move quickly. It is a pity that the Government are not using this Bill to move ahead immediately in areas where the case for further consultations is rather weak.

I hope that the Minister will bring back some better news when we next discuss matters such as this. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 246 withdrawn.