Baroness Kramer
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Banking Reform
Baroness Kramer Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Sassoon
The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, makes a very good point about the credit rating agencies. The Bill is about the structure of banking. Credit rating agency regulation is now essentially in the hands of the European Commission. The appropriate sub-committee of your Lordships’ European Union Committee produced an excellent report, which we debated recently, on this subject. Yes, we must keep the subject of credit ratings under discussion, but the competence is not primarily here, and it is not the subject of the Statement we are addressing.
On the lessons of history, Glass-Steagall and so on, this is a different model from the Glass-Steagall model and from the model that the US is implementing at the moment. The commission talked to a very wide range of people and, I am sure, studied the history very carefully. In the knowledge of the current and historical international precedents, that was its fundamental judgment about the high but flexible ring-fence. I believe it has come up with something that takes all those lessons on board, is appropriate for what we need now and is not going to impact significantly on the necessary driver for growth in this country, which is keeping credit flowing this year, next year and the year after.
Baroness Kramer
It is with real pleasure that I welcome the White Paper and the Statement by the Minister. He will be aware that my colleagues in both Houses, especially Vince Cable, have long called for the structural separation of vanilla banking from more speculative investment banking. We look at Vickers and the White Paper as a very acceptable and effective compromise. As a result of its structural nature, ring-fencing has far more possibility of resisting erosion over the years as the masters of the universe regain their confidence and begin to attempt to transfer risk back to the taxpayer.
The Minister mentioned the Government’s decision to stick with the 2019 timetable. Is that a really robust measure? He will have heard some of the major banks trying to put a bit of pressure on this. A long-grass strategy is clearly under consideration by those who are resistant to these changes.
I see no reason why the Financial Services Bill should be held up to make way for legislation that comes from this White Paper, but will the Minister and his team take a look to make sure that what is likely to flow from this can find a framework and that there will be genuine capacity within the Financial Services Bill? He will know that I am particularly taken with the section in the White Paper called “A More Diverse Banking Sector”. I am delighted to see that and the whole competition area in the White Paper emphasised so strongly. Will he make sure that the capacity for that exists comfortably within the Financial Services Bill when it leaves this House?