Financial Services Bill

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borrie]

My Lords, in agreeing with my noble friends Lord Barnett and Lord Peston in their amendment, I agree also with what the noble Lord, Lord Flight, has just said. He did not used the famous Latin phrase “caveat emptor”, perhaps because we are not supposed to use Latin any more—that is the case in the courts; it may be not so here. If it is convenient to the Committee, I shall speak to Amendment 106, which is grouped with my noble friends’ amendment.

The Bill states that the Financial Conduct Authority, in assessing the degree of consumer protection that is desirable,

“must have regard to … the needs that consumers may have for the timely provision of information and advice that is accurate and fit for purpose”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Oppenheim-Barnes, has kindly joined me in Amendment 106, because, while we agree about information and advice having to be accurate, we are not happy about the phrase “fit for purpose” and would prefer it to be replaced by “intelligible”.

“Fit for purpose” is a vague and uncertain phrase. As the consumer organisation Which? has said in briefing to me and no doubt to others, it is a woolly phrase and invites the question: whose purpose? It has become fashionable to use the phrase “fit for purpose” for all sorts of reasons, and despite its perfectly respectable origins in Section 14 of the Sale of Goods Act and indeed previous common law, it is now used to such a wide extent in all sorts of circumstances that it would be better replaced in the Bill with “intelligible”.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

My Lords, I was delighted to add my name to that of the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, on this amendment. We go back a very long way to when I first entered the Department of Trade and Industry. The position of director-general of fair trading was coming up for renewal and my officials said to me, “Well, you will obviously want to appoint somebody from your own side, Minister”, to which I replied, “There is only one person with whom I would be entirely satisfied”. That was the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and this has proved to be the case ever since.

This amendment is important. Perhaps I am not so happy with the term “fit for purpose” because I spent a great deal of my consumer life trying to find a better one, which I never did satisfactorily, in order that people could pursue their Sale of Goods Act rights. However, I will have more to say on this later—on Amendment 108, I think—when we reach that.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I supplement what my noble friend Lord Barnett and others have said about the built-in risk of pretty well every financial instrument that one might acquire. This amendment is very much in line with that made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Flight, on education. Therefore, again I must add my cautionary note that it is very hard to persuade people that the world is full of risk, particularly when it comes to instruments that look risk-free—for example, a government bond, which our Government have never reneged on. However, if it is a bond fixed in nominal terms, there is always the risk of inflation so that the real rate of return is highly risky. In a second example, the date of repayment of the bond can be an issue, so that even with a perfectly honest Government who intend to pay on the due date, if you have to cash the bond in at a different date then there is risk involved. It is vital that people understand these kinds of examples.

The other risk, and I am not quite clear how we can approach it, essentially stems from the possibility that the people one is dealing with are corrupt. To take the obvious example, if you are offered a particular asset with a high nominal rate of return, is this because the financial intermediary offering you that asset is particular inefficient or because they are up to no good and the only way they can lay their hands on this money is with a high rate of interest?

It is often immensely hard to disentangle whether you are running a risk by acquiring such an asset, and perhaps the great WC Fields’s dictum is relevant here:

“Never give a sucker an even break”.

The world is full of people like WC Fields, but how is the ordinary person to know if they are dealing with one? It seems to me, therefore, that the relevant authorities have a responsibility at least to take on board their duty to be of assistance to people, partly in an educative way, and partly by controlling the behaviour of people themselves.

I very much look forward to hearing the noble Lord’s reply on the question of risk. However, to summarise, my main point is that if you are living in an area where there is no risk, then you are dead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, this group of amendments is concerned with the information provided to consumers, so that they are able to make empowered choices and decisions. Amendment 104C seeks to add a new ‘have regard’ subsection to the list of matters that the FCA must consider in advancing its consumer protection objective—namely,

“the need to inform and educate consumers with special emphasis on the unavoidability of some risk”.

I agree with the noble Lord that consumers need to understand that there will necessarily always be an element of risk involved in engaging in a financial transaction, and that they must consider carefully their own risk appetite and the ability of their personal finances to absorb any loss, and enter in to any contract with full information. We cannot pursue a zero-failure regime in financial services, and consumers must understand this. The regulator cannot shoulder the responsibilities that consumers should take for their own decisions and actions, but it can take steps—as my noble friend Lord Hodgson said—to ensure that consumers have the best possible information when they make those choices.

Both financial education—which we spoke of earlier—and effective conduct of business regulation have a role to play in educating consumers about risk. The Money Advice Service will have a key role in improving financial literacy so that consumers understand the difference between available financial products and their uses, what information they should seek out before entering into a contract or transaction, and what rights they have when things do not go to plan. We covered the role of the MAS when we discussed Amendment 104.

[Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes]

On that point, the majority of those consumers who are more at risk than anyone else from misleading terms are those least likely to benefit from financial literacy tests. They will be properly informed only if this is done in a manner, and with the type of wording, that would be simple to understand, not complicated.

[Lord De Mauley]

That is right, my Lords. In fact, when we debated the previous group of amendments I spoke about the deliberations that the Department for Education is going through on that exact point, so I thank my noble friend for that.

The FCA will set the conduct-of-business regime within which firms will operate and the requirements with which they will have to comply. Just as the FSA does today, placing firms under detailed obligations to assess the suitability of products for individual clients, as well as specifying that warnings must be given to consumers who express an interest in buying a product that does not appear appropriate for their needs or their tolerance of risk. In addition, these requirements specify which risk factors must be highlighted in the case of specific products—for example, income withdrawals or the purchase of short-term annuities.

However, none of this means that it is the FCA that should be required to have regard to the need to educate consumers about the unavoidability of risk. The FCA is not a consumer education body—that is the role of the Money Advice Service—and neither is it an interlocutor between firms or advisers and consumers. So I cannot agree with that amendment.

The noble Lord, Lord Barnett, asked what an appropriate degree of protection would be. “Appropriate” is used to allow the FCA to differentiate between the different needs that consumers may have. The detail is set out in the FSA’s rules and will be transferred into the new FCA’s rules. I will not offer to send the noble Lord a copy of them because I suspect they might be quite voluminous, but if he would find it helpful I am sure I could send a reference to that particular point in them.