Financial Services Bill

Debate between Alison McGovern and Mark Durkan

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.