Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
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Financial Services Bill
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle ExcerptsWednesday 10th March 2021
(3 years, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Financial Services Bill 2019-21 View all Financial Services Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 162-VI(Rev) Revised sixth marshalled list for Grand Committee - (8 Mar 2021)
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]
My Lords, as the amendment suggests, I think it is necessary to know when there have been interventions and why. I do not say that from a wish to create political opportunity to complain—in fact, rather the opposite. When matters are transparent, there is generally less to complain about and more understanding. If there is a wish to keep everything private, that in itself is a problem. The amendment does not ask for chapter and verse on everything, just the nature of the intervention.
I recall the instances of HSBC and Standard Chartered. I was aware of them at the time, not from any information from the Government but because the size of US fines and the impact that it had on European banks were spoken about in Brussels. It is fair to say that there were concerns from other European countries. I do not think that the UK was the first to write. The financial stability point on fines for things that we also thought were pretty shocking was openly discussed in Brussels, including in my committee. Indeed, I recall having conversations around financial stability implications with the president of the ECB and with the Fed and US Treasury, although I do not think that one needs to advise people like Ben Bernanke about the relative sizes of UK banks and the UK economy and the problems that that will create; you would get pretty short shrift in return.
It is actually quite humiliating either to make or know about such interventions or to sit there while people say to you, “I’ve had a letter from your Minister.” I certainly felt humiliated about the need for such information by my country and humiliated by the behaviour of important financial institutions from my country. A normal response would be to try to make sure that it does not happen again, and I fear that progress has not been as good as it should have been. Maybe one reason for that, I now realise, was that there was no such discussion about these occurrences in the UK in the same way as there was in Brussels, which I find quite shocking. But too big to fail should not mean too big to jail. We have been around that debate already, in the sense of needing fairly to prevent offences, the construction of large companies, which create organised irresponsibility, and the FCA failing us at a critical moment in the SMCR, so it has been undermined.
To get back to the point about disclosure—yes, it should be shared, and any humiliation should be shared, so that those responsible at the time get more heat and there is greater resolve to make corrections. Everything is all so much more diluted and dismissible when it is looked at only as history.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for tabling the amendment, to which I was delighted to attach my name. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, and I welcome her support.
I do not think I need to add to the noble Lord’s detailed, forensic presentation of the clear, obvious and systemic problem: that Ministers intervene to end or direct investigations into fraud, corruption and malpractice. As he clearly documented, they do that on what appears to be a semi-regular basis. This amendment seeks to stop that, or at least make it illegal. Noble Lords might argue that it should not be; I certainly look forward to examining any contributions that seek to do that.
We have an institutional culture of cover-up, as the noble Lord said. We cannot be sure that every case has been exposed—indeed, it would be very surprising if they had been—despite the often extraordinary efforts of investigative journalists and academics such as the noble Lord. We are most likely seeing the tip of an iceberg. That what has been done emerges only later, dragged into the light of day despite considerable resistance, is of considerable detriment to public and international trust in both the financial sector and the British Government, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, just highlighted.
The most useful contribution that I can make to this debate is to the politics and the sociology—and I mean politics with a small “p” for, as the noble Lord demonstrated, this behaviour is not contained to Governments of any particular political hue. He said that ministerial coverups had emboldened banks. Behaviour that tolerates, supports and enables dishonest and corrupt practices encourages the spread of those practices. If there are indeed only a few rotten apples, which I am sure many from the financial sector will claim, the rot will spread if they remain in the barrel. Those people will still be in place in institutions—in many cases, in very senior places within those institutions —and be sharing, passing down and directing others to continue their practices, approaches and morals. I have an agricultural sciences degree; I can promise you that the rot will spread through the barrel.
We are now without the protective umbrella of EU regulation and what was once seen as a force independent of one particular financial centre that enforced some degree of cleanliness among all of them—albeit that the UK had an inordinate, often baleful influence on attempts to tighten regulation and prevent fraud and corruption. With the UK making its own rules, the behaviour of both the UK Government and the UK financial sector will come under greater scrutiny.
The EU is—not coincidentally after the UK’s departure—looking in the coming years to significantly tighten regulations on tackling fraud and corruption, on stopping tax dodging, on preventing greenwashing and on reining in the inordinate economic power of the internet giants. What happens in the UK will be weighed against that, which is why tightening up this Bill with this measure and others is crucial. What we need is not a more “competitive” financial sector but an upgraded one, one that is honest, straightforward and trustworthy.
There is also the politics in the broadest sense: the issue of how the Government are regarded, which is a long-running, serious issue for the UK. The place of politicians at the bottom of trustworthiness rankings is a source of jokes and bitterness but a serious and significant problem for our body politic. It has to be tackled. This amendment, a legal commitment to honesty and transparency, would be a significant step.
We are seen, from many sides of politics, to have a Government of the few, a Government for the money, a Government for the City of London, to the detriment of the country. This has to change if we are as a country to go forward.
I shall finish with a quote. The
“trend toward globalized corruption has been enabled in crucial part by regulatory asymmetries among key international economic actors and a lack of resources and political will in law enforcement.”
That comes not from the Tax Justice Network or Transparency International. It comes from a foreword to a report from the Center for American Progress entitled Turning the Tide on Dirty Money, signed by Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Tom Tugendhat MP, chairman of the UK Foreign Affairs Committee and David McAllister MEP, chairman of the EU Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs. The authors say that corruption
“threatens the resilience and cohesion of democratic governments around the globe and undermines the relationship between the state and its citizens.”
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]
My Lords, I have signed these amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and I agree with what he and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, have said. I am aware that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has a long record of engagement in these matters, because from time to time I discover that I am following in his footsteps. The “good work” amendments recognise that we need structural changes in how companies operate to ensure that they provide good work in the face of technological and societal changes. With the financial services sector both supporting all businesses and being our largest industry, it has a special, strategic leadership role to play, and ways that this can be brought about are contained in Amendments 108, 109 and 110. This would be in line with the principles of Section 3B(1)(c) of FSMA, which states that there is role for ensuring
“the desirability of sustainable growth in the economy of the United Kingdom in the medium or long term”.
In my book, sustainable growth must encompass technological and societal changes as well as the environment, but I fear there is a long way to go to live up to that.
In the interests of time, I shall concentrate on Amendment 122. There has been all-party support for employee share ownership in all its forms for a long time. Such schemes provide rewards and motivations in ways that wages cannot. At its best, an employee share plan will also give employees a say in how a business is run and can help to achieve many of the aims of the Good Work Charter, such as dignity, fair rewards, participation and learning.
Employee share ownership and employee ownership have many positive effects, and I want to highlight research on how well employee-owned companies deal with financial adversity.
Research published by the Cass Business School after the 2008 financial crisis established that employee-owned companies create jobs faster than non-employee-owned counterparts and withstood the recession better as it deepened. They recruited when non-employee-owned companies were laying off staff, and had motivation where others found it hard to motivate staff.
More recently, I chaired an inquiry into the effects of employee ownership and the report, entitled Ownership Dividend, found evidence that showed that employee-owned businesses performed better, were more resilient and more rooted in local economies—hence why the term “ownership dividend” was coined. Therefore, as has been said, such companies have a strong part to play in the UK’s plans to build back better and restart the economy.
Amendment 122 suggests an emphasis on analysing impact of sustainable growth provided by employees share schemes. As I mentioned previously, it should already be covered in the principles, but the urgency around “sustainable” in all its forms does not seem to be present. Therefore, I commend Amendment 122, as well as the good work amendment.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 108, 109 and 110 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson Ashley Abbotts and Lord Knight of Weymouth. I broadly agree with everything they said.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in his introduction, referred to the level of dissatisfaction in our society: the threats from poverty, inequality and insecurity. I would say that these amendments are digging here into some of the depth of the problems that I referred to in my speech on a previous group and seek to provide some remedies. As he was speaking, I thought of meeting an USDAW representative in Sheffield referring to one of her members who had just come to her to seek a voucher for a food bank. The member was not, as you would expect as an USDAW member, unemployed; in fact, that member had seven jobs, but they were all zero-hours contract jobs and that particular week they had not delivered enough money for that person to feed themselves and their family.
However, it is important that we do not just focus—the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, did not—on those who are in desperate poverty and inequality, as awful as that is. As he was speaking, I could not help but think of what the late, great David Graeber called—here I may be about to use what is unparliamentary language here, but it is a direct quote—“bullshit jobs”. The noble Lord referred to people’s desire to get meaning, to feel that what they are doing, how they are using their time and talents, is worthwhile and contributing to society. Indeed, a failure to acknowledge and understand that—a focus purely on the pounds, shillings and pence—is at the root of a lot of our problems: the financialisation, to which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred, of our entire economy—not just the financial parts but the real economy, the care economy, the public service economy.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to managing things in a different way. I point again to New Zealand’s living standards framework, that guides its Treasury—based on a system not that dissimilar to our own—where they judge the quality of work, people’s security, the quality of the environment and the economy all together and seek to manage them to a stable, secure, decent whole.
These are important amendments and crucial principles, so I wanted to speak briefly in favour of them.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con) [V]
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak to this group of amendments. In doing so, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I shall speak particularly to Amendment 122. It is evident that employee share ownership is a positive force within our economy, and speaks so much to the current Covid environment and what kind of economic sector, work and business basis we can have to our economy as we built out of Covid.
It is no surprise that Sir Nicholas Goodisson, after taking the London Stock Exchange through the big bang and seeing some of the early privatisations, then moved on to a role heading up the Wider Share Ownership Council. He saw the benefits and the positive impact that it had for people to have a stake in something, and there could be no better example of that than employees having a stake—a share—in the company for which they work on a daily basis.
I believe we will see more innovative models of employee ownership coming through. The EOT, for example, is still very much in its embryonic phase but it is a very positive concept and construct. There will be further developments in this area and I believe Amendment 122 sets out the case very well that when employees have a share, a stake and a say in the business for which they work, it benefits all concerned.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. He is, without a doubt, the House’s expert, and indeed enthusiast, on all these issues. In this large group of amendments, he has covered a broad range of issues of what is a huge area of the future of finance. He and I might differ somewhat in our balance between enthusiasm and concern about the risks, but it is really important that we are able to debate this. It is disappointing, however, to see the very small number of participants on this group, which brings up an issue that I will raise later, about the capacity of this Committee of your Lordships’ House to fulfil the role laid on us to scrutinise such large, complex, new and fast-moving areas.
Given the pressure of time, I will restrict myself to commenting on three amendments in this group. I start with Amendment 112, to which the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has also added her name. It calls for an artificial intelligence officer in companies—someone such as, I should imagine, a chief financial officer. I did a master’s thesis partly on artificial intelligence 20 years ago; I was then and remain an AI sceptic. After 20 years, we seem to be at the same point that we were then, which is “We are about to get to AI really soon, now, yes, it’s going to work”. In those 20 years, however, there has been massive progress in what is known in shorthand as “big data”, or the ability to crunch truly astonishing quantities of data and to manipulate and use it. So I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, that perhaps what is needed is some kind of title or combination of roles that takes in both data and AI together.
On Amendment 118, the ethical use of artificial intelligence, the noble Lord has already covered this quite well, but it is important to stress that, in recent years, we have seen huge exposure of the difficulties of a sector that is profoundly unrepresentative of people whose lives it increasingly impacts. The noble Lord gave the example of soap dispensers which, in these days of Covid-19, is a potential matter of life and death; but we also need to think about access to your finances and being able to manage your finances, and even simply being able to manage them without having to take vastly more time and effort than some other person just because the AI mechanisms are discriminatory. These are all issues that need to be engaged with. I note, for example, that some of the events that have been happening recently at Google do not fill one with confidence about the ways in which the culture of the entire artificial intelligence community is moving—certainly in some areas.
I will comment finally on Amendment 119, about digital resilience. This is one of the most important factors of all. We increasingly hear talk of the internet of things, and of tying together the internet of things and fintech. I think particularly of the recent opening of a store in which there are no checkout people and no scanning and where lots of cameras watch and monitor everything that happens in that store and then a bill appears in your email later. This relates to an earlier group and our discussion on the nature of work and good work, but it also relates very much to the issues of discrimination and resilience.
I was in Lancaster a few years ago, after it had suffered an enormous flood. For several days, the city was without power and it was clear that things very nearly fell apart, due in large part to our reliance already on technology and fintech—that was how people paid for things. We need to think hard about issues of resilience in our age of shocks and how we build systems that will not be at risk of profoundly falling apart—not just the cash machines falling apart, but an inability to even obtain food.
I also need to mention the issues around bitcoin and other digital currencies. There are huge and growing concerns about their environmental impacts and indeed the sustainability of those impacts. Bitcoin and other such currencies are extremely energy-hungry by design. A single bitcoin transaction uses 707 kilowatt hours of electricity, which is the equivalent of 24 days of use by a single average US household. On an annual basis, were bitcoin alone to be a country, it would be 39th in the world in its energy consumption. These are massive changes that need to be considered in the round—the kind of triple accounting that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, talked about before. They are issues that deserve far more time and focus than we can give them today, but they really do need to be tackled.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]
My Lords, this amendment was not intended newly to introduce country-by-country reporting but to maintain the country-by-country reporting requirements that exist through CRD IV and retained EU law. In retrospect, looking at my amendment now, perhaps that is not quite clear.
Once again, as the statutory instrument layer is removed, it is within the purview of our financial regulators to decide that some things are inconvenient or not part of their main remit and to dispense with them. Article 89 of CRD IV requires institutions to report annually, specifying by country in which they have an establishment, information on a consolidated basis including: name, nature of activity and geographical location; turnover; number of employees on a full-time basis; profit or loss before tax; tax on profit or loss; and public subsidies received. Since then, there has been a little more general progress in country-by-country reporting, but I wanted to ensure there were no backward steps as the PRA and FCA start to write the rules.
There was much coverage at the time about the late insertion by the European Parliament of country-by-country reporting that nobody expected, but I can tell the story—which can actually be seen if we look at whole article in the directive. As was the way in trialogues that I chaired in the European Parliament, we shared out speaking. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, will be pleased to hear that the Greens were leading on country-by-country reporting, but all that had been conceded to the Parliament in the trialogue was an assessment, maybe followed by legislation if appropriate.
I got a note from the Greens’ adviser saying that they were out of arguments and asking whether I could help. Maybe I should have framed that, because a Green being out of arguments is quite an astonishing thing. They knew that at that stage we had nothing to trade in return to get country-by-country reporting in. So I asked the Council and Commission to confirm that the only reason why they objected was that industry was saying that economic damage would be caused by country-by-country reporting. They both swore that that was the only reason why they were objecting to the insertion of such a clause: that they were afraid of what might happen if these really rather mild provisions were introduced.
I then proposed that the information be submitted in confidence to the Commission and that, in consultation with the regulators, there be then a general assessment of potential negative economic consequences of public disclosure, including the impact on competitiveness, investment, credit availability and the stability of the financial system. It sounds incredible, but those were the scare stories that the other institutions had bought into.
In the event that the report, including analysis based on actual data, identified significant effects, then the provision of public disclosures could be deferred or removed, but otherwise the provision would come into force in 2015. Having sworn that the only nervousness was about all these effects, they then had to concede that proposal. All that explains the content that you can clearly see in article 89 and the report in its paragraph 3. Of course, no damage was found, and the article is in force and transposed into UK law. I quote from a 2014 PWC document on compliance:
“HMT sought to adopt a pragmatic approach to provide rules that are practical and which provide some options designed to ease the compliance burden faced by businesses. This optionality has allowed HMT to implement rules that comply with CRD IV, but which, in line with broader Government policy, do not mandate reporting beyond the requirements of CRD IV.”
There are some activities that would trigger investment firms falling within scope, so it therefore seems relevant to raise this matter in the Bill, as the investment firm provisions are about to be rewritten. Of course, small and UK-only investment firms may not fall within the definitions, because I am proposing carry-over of the existing ones, but where they are larger organisations then they should continue to comply. Against that background, I hope that the Government will not say that they want to allow closing down of transparency and that the Minister will understand why I do not believe any of the scare stories about damage. I beg to move.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, not just because she highlighted the role of the Greens in pushing country-by-country reporting at the European level, and the value of having a Green in the room. A great way of bringing people on board and into the debate is to ask them for help. I will briefly quote the chair of European Parliament’s sub-committee on taxation, MEP Paul Tang:
“I think transparency is a powerful tool for change because many of the current tax policies can’t stand the light of day. Just shine the light on it.”
That was from an interview with Forbes, showing how so many of the defenders of the status quo are increasingly isolated and clearly out of touch, not just with the public but with much of the establishment who realise that things cannot go on as they are.
I have been asked at public meetings over many years how we get multinationals, rich individuals and the financial sector to pay their taxes. My first answer is simple: you need a Government who want to make them pay their taxes. My second, more detailed and technical, answer is, simply, country-by-country reporting. This is something that the UK can impose without needing international agreements. I back the noble Baroness’s amendment to the hilt.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, I am going to be very brief again on this issue, because I cannot pretend that it is my area of expertise. I remember the period when George Osborne was very proud of saying that not only would he make country-by-country a requirement but that it would be published. My understanding is that that was reversed in 2016. Perhaps the Minister will correct me, but that information is no longer published at a national level and the UK has been fairly instrumental in blocking the OECD from publishing the data at an international level. I apologise if I have got that wrong: I am reading from a Tax Justice Network report. Its calculation is that, as a consequence of not publishing, and therefore not having the cleansing impact of transparency, the UK misses out on collecting something in the range of £2.5 billion in corporate taxes a year.
Again, this is not my area of expertise, but I shall wish to hear from the Minister. We as a country have always said the answer is transparency. We have insisted that publication is the mechanism for cleaning up abuse. I would be extremely troubled if the regulators felt they were now in a position to weaken in any way country-by-country reporting requirements.
“Regular impact assessments on the UK financial services sector
(1) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, and every subsequent five years, the responsible Treasury Minister, Chairs and Chief Executive Officers of the Prudential Regulation Authority and Financial Conduct Authority must each separately provide reports to relevant Committees of the House of Commons and House of Lords.(2) The reports under subsection (1) must include an assessment and critical analysis of the following—(a) the costs and benefits of the financial services sector in the United Kingdom;(b) the impact of the financial services sector on inequality and economic development;(c) the impact of capital allocation decisions on real economic activity;(d) net gains or losses to the real economy caused by mergers and acquisitions;(e) risks to the real economy of write downs in the value of financial assets;(f) risks inherent in “shadow banking”;(g) the impacts of money and financial activities being moved to offshore jurisdictions.(3) In preparing the reports under subsection (1), the responsible person must consult with, and publish any submissions from, the Financial Scrutiny and Oversight Network.(4) In this section—“shadow banking” means financial services which are not subject to regulatory oversight, including but not limited to unregulated activities by regulated entities;“real economy” means the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services.”
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, I beg to move my Amendment 123 and speak also to Amendment 124. They are quite large amendments, and I would say significant proposals, and I have cut down what I shall say given the time. This is based in large part on the work of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute, known as SPERI, and particularly Professor Andrew Baker there, and the Tax Justice Network, particularly Nicholas Shaxson.
I begin with Amendment 123, as it flows on from an earlier exchange between the noble Earl and me, which he kindly continued by letter, confirming my assumption that the source of his claim for the annual tax revenue for the financial sector of £76 billion came from a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. That is, of course, a gross figure, one that reflects income but not costs. It is in no way an impact assessment. It is a pity that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, is not with us now.
This amendment proposes that within 12 months of the passing of this Bill and every subsequent five years the responsible bodies must separately provide reports to the relevant committee of the Commons and Lords and consult the financial scrutiny and oversight network, which I shall get to shortly. Behind this is the fact that there is now a large body of academic literature, known as the “too much finance” literature, which supports the idea that some countries, including most certainly the United Kingdom, suffer from the finance curse: too much finance makes us poorer. It seems that the City of London passed the point of optimal finance sometime in the 1980s and has grown massively since then, harming the UK economy. The only study of which I am aware that has attempted to quantify the damage, from SPERI, estimated in 2019 that excess finance reduced economic growth by a cumulative £4.5 trillion from 1995 to 2015. That is the finance curse.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer. He focused on the positive impacts of the financial sector and, when he came to addressing negative impacts, he talked a lot about risk. There is of course a lot of focus on risk at the moment with what is happening with Greensill and the shadow banking sector, but I do not believe that he really addressed the other negative impacts such as the diversion of human resources and capital. Indeed, when he was talking about the tax revenue, I thought that my PhD graduate from Newcastle would surely be working in some sector contributing in different ways.
The Minister perhaps misunderstood the issue of equality, so maybe I need to look at redrafting that. I referred to regional inequality and looked at socioeconomic and other areas of inequality.
I will speak briefly on the responses from others. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, pretty well said that she thought we should have exactly what I was proposing. She said that there were a great deal of resources in think tanks, academics and NGOs and that we needed to bring them together. That is exactly what is proposed in FSON—a network, not reinventing the wheel, not creating a whole new institution, but just making sure that those things are joined up and have a structure to work together to identify the crucial points.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said that there were consultations on the way so we would have to wait but, with the risks—as the Minister acknowledged—and the costs of the financial sector, we really cannot wait. We have to act now. I have cited some very traditional, mainstream sources expressing great concern about the problems that the financial sector presents. We cannot have business as usual. As the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, said earlier, the cost of doing nothing is enormous. However, given where we are and the time of the evening—I have cut short my planned remarks significantly—I beg leave to withdraw my amendment, though I suspect I will bring this back on Report.