Financial Services Bill

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

I entirely agree with the Chairman of the Treasury Committee, who is very knowledgeable and has some strong views on these questions. It is a pity that when we flick through the luminous list of Lords amendments, we find a gaping hole on those crisis management arrangements, where none was accepted by the Government. Some clauses in the Bill deal with that set of scenarios, and it is noticeable that such provision is not included there. That is in part why we have sought to amend Lords amendment 3, as one of the few areas where we can make an amendment is in respect of the role and duties of the oversight committee. I accept that that is only half of the scenario, as we also want Her Majesty’s Treasury to have a process for reviewing the adequacy and effectiveness of its arrangements with the Bank of England, but we do not have the opportunity today to propose such an amendment.

If we are to have an oversight committee, it should be able to play a role in ensuring that the crisis management arrangements are up to scratch and that there is joined-up thinking between these variously important branches of governance to ensure that someone at the Bank of England is tasked with thinking these things through very carefully.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is incredibly important that Parliament gives its view on such issues, given the weight of academic insight into the arrangements in place at the time of the crash? We are trying to learn some of the lessons from that, and one of the key lessons is the importance of rules and thinking them through ahead of the scenarios, since it is literally impossible to know what the next unforeseen shock might be and where it might come from.

[Chris Leslie]

My hon. Friend is correct that this is about learning the lessons of preparedness and of what level of forward thinking we can undertake at this point in time. It is still amazing—I know she agrees—that although the FSA conducted a comprehensive review of its role in the financial crisis and the Treasury and Government did the same, we have to this day still not had a comprehensive review by the Bank of England of its role in the financial crisis. That is amazing. It begrudgingly had three minor reviews dragged out of it—it was like getting blood out of a stone—considering small particular areas where it had some failings. Those reviews concluded that there were serious issues to be addressed, and one of the individuals conducting one of those three small arrangements talked about the fact that the governance arrangements in the Bank of England were still too centralised. I hope that the Government will think more carefully about crisis management provisions.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way again. This is a crucial point: Parliament rarely discusses the strategic role of the Bank of England and rarely legislates, in part because the independence of the Bank of England is still a valid economic principle on which we hope to rebuild our economy. We must therefore get the discussion right at this time.

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Fifthly, the Governor’s central and enhanced position is unaffected and the Bank’s hierarchical nature, with him at the apex, will remain. He is a single institutional point of systemic risk in the new governance arrangements. The danger of group-think will remain. Bill Winters recently drew attention in his review to that hierarchical problem and the need to place a requirement on the Governor to consult others, particularly the deputy governor.

[Alison McGovern]

May I take the hon. Gentleman back to his fourth point? He mentioned the Treasury Committee’s ability to get information from the Bank. What specifically is he concerned about, and does he think that his Committee ought to be able to access data from the Bank as part of its oversight role? First, how would he improve on that point? What specifics of governance does he think we must look for? Secondly, is it a question of getting data out of the Bank so that group-think can be laid bare and investigated? Am I right to take those points from what he has said?

[Mr Tyrie]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not linger on those points for too long, because the Committee has set that out in some detail in a number of reports. On her first point, in a nutshell, one need only look at the corporate governance arrangements of almost any public sector body, or indeed any public company, to see that the lines of accountability are powerfully drawn between their non-executives and the executive arm. That is almost completely lacking in the court, whose role is heavily circumscribed and, until recently, involved nothing more than oversight of the Bank’s budget. Indeed, I have been told informally that until recently an unspoken requirement of membership of the court was to have no great knowledge of financial matters, and certainly not to interfere with them. That strikes me as the negation of genuine oversight, but perhaps those who whispered such thoughts in my ear were making mischief.

On the hon. Lady’s second point, it is of course crucial that somewhere in the accountability framework there is a group of people who are capable of asking for detailed information in order to make the scrutiny meaningful. The Treasury Committee, in our investigations into Royal Bank of Scotland, found that we needed to send specialist advisers into the FSA to obtain the necessary papers to ensure that they were taken into account in its report on RBS. I do not think that it would be a healthy state of affairs if the Treasury Committee ends up having to send specialist advisers into the Bank of England to perform such a role. It would be far better to have a group of non-executives in the Bank of England whose explicit task is to look for those documents and to be available to help us do the scrutiny directly. My reply to her questions touches only the surface of the more detailed reply that could be given, but it has been set out in some detail in at least two Treasury Committee reports.

Next year we will have a new Governor. He could, of course, grasp the opportunity to improve all this, and no doubt he will form views about governance, ones that might benefit from legislative change. The Banking Commission will also make recommendations on standards, culture, competition, governance, regulation and sanctions for rule-breaking by bankers. Any or all of those might require statutory action. I would be grateful for an assurance on that from the Minister, so will he commit the Government to broadening the scope of the banking Bill to ensure that further amendments to FSMA, including in the areas I have just mentioned, can, if necessary, be made next year?

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[Chris Leslie]

Indeed, that is the case. Anxiety is spreading and rumours are circulating that people with credit impairments or county court judgments against them are finding it increasingly difficult to access basic bank account services. One of the most shocking changes has been the way some of the big banks have started gradually to pull out of the LINK cash machine network. That network depends on all the banks taking part, because, if some big banks withdraw, as has happened, more of the cost of maintaining the network falls on a minority of banks, which, as a result, are more likely to walk away. I have worries, therefore, not just about the basic bank account networks, but about the LINK cash machine system, and I would be grateful if the Minister set out to those banks in no uncertain terms that, given their social duties and responsibilities as a utility, we expect—as a de minimis requirement—that they maintain those basic, fundamental activities.

[Alison McGovern]

Will my hon. Friend slightly broaden his comments about the LINK system? In too many of our towns and cities, cash machines in the most deprived areas are the ones that charge. Unfortunately, the principle that those with the least pay the most is creeping back into financial services. If we do nothing else this evening, let us send the message to the financial services industry that such a principle is wholly unacceptable.

[Chris Leslie]

That is true. The Opposition take the view that the financial services sector needs to move away from the old model of essentially extracting profit on the basis either of the ignorance or lack of awareness of customers—basically taking advantage of the inertia in the system—or of the fact that the consumer has no other choice. We need to support a financial services sector that genuinely adds professional value and acumen to products fairly and transparently. That is the modern sort of financial services sector that this country deserves and can have. We need to get away from that old era, in which the banking system essentially raked in multiples of small penny packets of income and profit off the backs of people who were not necessarily aware they were being charged 25p or 50p for cash withdrawals. That is the sort of bad practice we need to move away from.

The Opposition have called for action to ensure that pockets of the country are not left isolated and on their own. In the United States, they have clear safeguards requiring banks to reinvest in communities and provide basic coverage. That counts not only for consumers, but for small businesses, which, as we know, also struggle to access affordable loans.

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[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend mentioned ethics a moment ago. Although we need a financial services system that is internally ethical and that has the right culture, there is a broader problem. The LIBOR scandal bit in the way it did not because it was a usual Whitehall story, but because the Government rely on LIBOR, among other indices, to know what is going on in financial services. This might not be the part of the Bill that has been most hotly debated this evening, but we are all reliant on these indices. Is that why my hon. Friend is suggesting that we should cast the net a little wider and try to get ahead of the problem rather than constantly chase ourselves?

[Chris Leslie]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent intervention. She is right. In our debates about financial services we sometimes talk in rarefied or esoteric technical terms, but this issue is certainly of relevance to all our constituents, whose mortgage rates, the interest they pay on loans, and, in the case of oil markets, the price they pay for petrol at the petrol station and the price they pay to heat their homes, as well as prices in the gas and food markets—the price of a loaf of bread, for example—are all too often rooted in the costs of these commodities and investments, as determined by the global trading environment.

This is what it boils down to: it is a question of trust. Hitherto, people assumed that all the market benchmark arrangements were simply transparent exchanges of data and prices that showed the true value of an investment, product or commodity, and that people were buying and selling in an open and fair process. It turned out that those in the know, who were often highly paid traders in the bigger banks—incidentally, even more revelations will come out over the coming months about the banks that might have been involved in LIBOR—knew how to wangle the system and play the market in a way that helped not only the profits of their particular company, but that boosted their own personal bonus arrangements. It was a question of using other people’s money in order to shift massive volumes of trades. Even if the changes in price were fractional and seemed irrelevant, when they were multiplied by the billions of trades that were taking place they could have massive financial advantages to those traders involved.

It was alleged recently that banks rigged electricity markets in the United States and record fines have been issued. That involved British institutions, so British regulators should be explicitly equipped to tackle attempts to rig commodities trading, whether it be spot trading, forward contracts, futures contracts or hedging arrangements. Global commodities markets include a vast range of products, such as grains, fibre, other food, precious and industrial metals, energy, carbon offsets and so on.

As I have said, British households are affected by commodity market manipulation—perhaps even more than attempts to rig LIBOR. Commodity speculation has contributed to the record costs of staple foods in recent years. In fact, some people argue that the riots and social unrest in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries were influenced by pricing issues and distortions.

Last month, after the Energy Secretary made a statement to Parliament, the Financial Services Authority and Ofgem confirmed that they were conducting an inquiry into claims that British companies manipulated the wholesale gas market on 28 September. The Government have said that it would not be appropriate to use legislation to cover pure commodities, such as gas, but that if commodities are referenced by derivatives or other financial instruments, it is covered by the definition of investments. However, a derivative instrument may essentially be a traded instrument and there is no reason for it to fall within that definition. It could be regarded as an insurance product and so does not fall clearly within the definition of investments in Lords amendment 119.

Total, the French oil company, recently made open allegations against one of the PRAs. That is not the PRA as we know and love it—the Prudential Regulatory Authority—but another acronym. Price reporting agencies are companies or organisations that essentially gather information, almost as a journalist might do, and figure out broadly what is happening in the market. However, it is not necessarily a true reflection of what is happening. Total alleged that there were erratic processes involved and that it was not a true reflection of the state of the market. There were also questions over the methodologies of the price reporting agencies. Does the Minister think that price reporting agencies need to be within the regulatory ambit? Again, they are important component players in the financial services sector, but are not familiar to all our constituents—but by goodness, they would become familiar to all our constituents if they were not trusted or were seen to be failing in some way.

[Chris Leslie]

I do want to see more transparency. Electronic data exchanges certainly have the potential to provide the regulators, including the Bank of England, with more real-time transactional information about what is actually happening. I do not necessarily want to see regulators wading through reams of information, but I want to ensure that, if need be, they have the scope to act. It is not clear that the Financial Services Bill, as it first entered Parliament in February, would have captured the LIBOR benchmarking situation within the regulatory perimeter. There were suggestions from the FSA that it was not something that it could deal with. That was not good enough and the Government have come forward with amendments. I want to ensure that those amendments allow the regulators to trigger inquiries and oversight for all benchmarking indices and arrangements, especially in the commodities market.

The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who has been campaigning on oil and petrol prices, has called for an OFT and FSA investigation into manipulation by oil firms in recent times. The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission has raised questions about price fixing and manipulation in the silver market. That study was inconclusive, but questions linger over metals markets more broadly. The Minister’s good friend, the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Commissioner Barnier, has suggested that all commodity indices should be covered in this way. Rather than waiting for European regulators to ensure that this happens, why do we not take this opportunity to deal with the issue?

We should not just say that benchmarking means investments; it is vital that we put it beyond doubt that the question of commodities is included. It is a stitch in time to ensure that we cast the regulatory perimeter correctly. I commend amendments (a), (b) and (c) to Lords amendment 60 to the House.

[Alison McGovern]

I promise not to test your patience, Mr Deputy Speaker, or that of the House by speaking for too long. Some, I know, will be of the view that indices and benchmarks are dry, dull, technical subjects—[Hon. Members: “Never!”] Hon. Members may say that, but I suspect them of sarcasm.

I begin with an explanation of why I think this part of the legislation so important, and why the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) are crucial. In my view, they relate directly to the subject that currently fills our newspapers and television screens—the indignity and horror of food banks. The reason my constituents, and those of other hon. Members, cannot just pop to the shops and buy food is that food costs more than the amount of money in their pockets. In the long term, the answer to that problem is not charity—grateful though we are for those efforts—but a food system that provides sustenance for people to buy in shops at a price they can afford. Price is not a technical, dry issue that ought to be left to economists in the academy; it should be of importance to every family, as I know it is to every MP.

Food prices unite those who are finding life difficult at the moment both at home and far away. Although I applaud the efforts of those who try to help people out, in the end we must seek a better solution. Whether we like it or not, since the 18th century this country has taken part in global trade. We had a strategic role in that which I will not bore the House with, but part of it means that we, more than others, have a special responsibility to understand global trading systems, not least the one that ensures there is enough food for us to buy here at home, and that farmers in this country and far away get paid a fair price.

This morning I was with the UN Secretary-General’s special representative for food security. He described two current problems in the commodity market that I hope will help people to realise why we must understand that phenomenon. First, global food prices are currently extremely volatile. Secondly, although prices are moving sharply up and down, they are trending upwards. That means that those most vulnerable to the price change in that commodity face an ever-worsening scenario as they try to feed themselves and their families. How can benchmarks and a better understanding of the data help? Well, when we understand those movements we can try to find out what is behind volatility in global prices.

Briefly, let me take hon. Members back in time to about 2005 until the end of 2007. Economists around the world were busy writing papers on derivatives and what we now call shadow banking, and saying that sharing risk in that way was a good idea and helped to manage investment and the finance markets globally. We now know that facts and information were available that we could not see, and my question concerns what is going on now that we cannot see, specifically in relation to food prices. Is there an issue with derivatives based on commodities? My hon. Friend has already given some indications of why we might think that.

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[Sheila Gilmore]

Will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that trading in commodity derivatives can skew investment and whole industries if not properly regulated? For example, I visited the jute museum in Dundee, where one display made the point that the jute lords made more from trading in futures than they made from production. That might have made them less interested in diversifying their manufacturing industry, which has completely died.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for that highly appropriate intervention. When the history of Great Britain is written, it will show that that part of the east coast of Scotland has had a great influence on economics throughout. The example from Dundee is a good one.

All hon. Members look back at global financial trading and markets and wonder how we got to the situation we found ourselves in. When the shadow banking market and complex derivatives and products were created, people became much more interested in them than in the real economy and the fundamentals of our economy. They saw the financial system as a servant to the rest of the economy rather than the other way around. I hope that view is shared broadly on both sides of the House. The Minister is nodding, but I am not entirely sure he agrees with that specific point. I will live in hope and imagine he does.

When the Minister is consulting on whether to broaden the Bill’s reach from the indices that I have mentioned to commodities, will he consider the impact of escalating food and oil prices not only on his constituents and mine, but on those who live closest to the extreme poverty line in the poorest countries? Will he consider the price of maize and wheat in very poor countries, where there is no social support system and no welfare state security net of the sort we have in this country? Will this country take a leading role in properly understanding what is happening in that market?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

To use the increase in food commodity prices as an argument for increased control over derivatives trading is a little far-fetched. Surely increased prices have much more to do with the increased world population and the weather than they have to do with commodities trading.

[Alison McGovern]

As I have said, this morning I listened to a presentation from the UN Secretary-General’s special representative on global food security. We discussed the matters that the hon. Gentleman mentions, but there was strong interest in whether the trading of commodity derivatives has played a role or had an impact in increased prices. The hon. Gentleman may suggest that its effect is negligible, and I would be happy to see any evidence he can forward to me. As I try to understand the phenomenon, I am happy to look at numbers and think about the evidence. I am an empiricist if nothing else; we should always consider the evidence. One of the problems to date, however, has been the availability of information, and making it clear and evident for all to see. I have tried to make the point that people looking at the world economy could not, for specific reasons, necessarily see the problems relating to sub-prime mortgages. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East has suggested, we should try to get ahead of the problem and ensure that there are no longer problems that we simply do not see.

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making a good point, but did the person whom she met this morning give her alternatives to the derivatives and commodities markets? The worldwide food supply is decided by commodities buying. There is a drought in America, so the price of wheat goes up. There is heavy rain in this country, so we have problems ourselves. There are problems in Bangladesh and all around the world that push up the price of food. The same is true for oil; when there is a shortage of oil, the oil price goes up. Did the gentleman whom she spoke to this morning provide an alternative to what we have now? Maybe we could look at it and come up with some suggestions ourselves.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and his compliment that he thinks my point is not wholly without merit, but it might test your patience, Mr Deputy Speaker, if I tried to shoehorn into the debate on the amendment possible solutions to the global food crisis and productivity in agriculture.

On derivatives, in agriculture production there is a need to hedge. There needs to be some kind of financial security to take account of unforeseen weather events and so on, so of course there is a need to hedge, but that is not what I am talking about. The question is whether some of the recent high-volume, high-speed forms of speculation and trading have had an impact on the global food price. I suspect that they might have, but it would be nice to have more information.

[Mark Durkan]

When some of us raised these issues in the previous Parliament, the then Government pooh-poohed the whole problem of speculation in relation to derivatives and so on. Does the hon. Lady share the concern that, as banks, hedge funds and all our pension funds try to work their way towards replenishing themselves after the crisis, there is a danger that they will go back to the bad ways of speculating in all sorts of commodities? Does she think the Government should prioritise this issue during their G8 presidency next year, and discuss with other Governments how to circumscribe the capacity of financial institutions to play dangerous games with this sort of speculation?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which was characteristically well made. I share his fear, and his point about the G8 is absolutely correct. It will be great to have the G8 summit in Northern Ireland. I am sure that the Minister has heard the hon. Gentleman’s point and will duly feed it back to the Prime Minister, because there is no doubt that it is important.

In conclusion, underlying what we are trying to achieve is a financial system that has appropriate oversight. Given the importance—we now know this—to our everyday well-being and comfort of what appear to be financial technicalities and bits of information that people do not necessarily connect with the realities of life, I hope that the Government will pay the most careful attention to the results of the consultation on commodities, because we might have a genuine opportunity to set in train rules that will help us to spot the awful crashes and difficult phenomena of the future.

[Greg Clark]

It is a pleasure to respond to this short but important debate.

The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) referred to the heated exchanges before the summer. They were necessarily heated because they concerned a major scandal that did great damage to the country’s reputation. The whole House feels strongly about this matter because the industry is vital to the country’s economic future. About 2 million people are employed in the financial services and related industries, most of them in capacities far removed from the ability—and still more the inclination—to engage in the kind of behaviour that came to light in the LIBOR scandal. It is a particular source of outrage that many ordinary working people across the UK with careers in the banking industry have been besmirched by the behaviour of people far from them. As a result, in their ordinary working lives and in conducting their activities, they found themselves bracketed with people who were shaming an industry that they were proud to work in—an industry associated with high standards of sobriety and propriety—and it is particularly important that we act decisively and firmly against the perpetrators of the manipulation that came to light in the summer.

The amendments do precisely that. All Members will recognise the pace with which we have responded, given that the allegations came to light in late June. We immediately asked an independent reviewer, Martin Wheatley, to look into the allegation. He conducted his work over the summer and reported in September. The Government considered all his recommendations and have adopted every one of them. The fact that we are here, in early December, reaching the final stages of legislation to act on those recommendations shows that the Government and the House have taken the allegations very seriously and are acting to restore the reputation not only of the City of London, but of the financial services industry in this country. I hope that the world will see that, when something comes to light that objectively is scandalous, we will not stand by and watch it happen, but will take legislative action immediately.

I shall refer to some of the points made by the hon. Members for Nottingham East and for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). Let me deal first with the independence of benchmark providers. There are, of course, lots of different benchmark providers, not all of which—it is important to say—were associated with the problems that LIBOR and the British Bankers Association had. The Wheatley review recommended that the BBA step aside from setting LIBOR. Future administrators, which may be private, commercial or otherwise—there is no restriction—will be subject to the type of regulation powers contained in these amendments. On LIBOR specifically, the tender committee chaired by Baroness Hogg is in its early stages. We will of course update the House on the progress it makes when it considers who will operate the LIBOR benchmark in future.