Draft Securitisation (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

David Linden Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 General Committees

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I have a degree of sympathy for the Minister, who I believe is pretty much camped out here in these Delegated Legislation Committees—I am just the latest in the rota of Scottish National party colleagues to cover a DL Committee.

With only a month until the UK leaves the EU, it is frankly a disgrace that the UK Government are only now getting round to sorting out these details. Time is of the essence when we know the UK is due to leave at the end of next month. Scotland’s financial sector has been clear that its interests are best served in the EU single market and customs union. Ten years after the crash, our financial services sector needs meaningful reform, not new problems stemming from Brexit. Instead of planning how to minimise the damage, we should instead be using our time here to plan a successful future inside the EU.

We know that this statutory instrument will not stop the tide of financial services jobs and assets leaving the UK because of Brexit. Financial services firms are voting with their wallets already and have moved assets worth $1 trillion from the UK to the rest of Europe since the Brexit referendum, according to EY. According to Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank AG is repatriating at least €400 billion to Frankfurt, with JPMorgan taking €200 billion, Goldman Sachs €60 billion, CitiGroup €50 billion and Morgan Stanley €40 billion.

We know the impact that these Brexit shenanigans are having on our economy, and I do not think this SI will do anything much to stem that tide of financial services jobs leaving the UK. While I will not be pushing this to a vote, I want to put that on the record. What we see here is a British Parliament and a British Government that are making no sense whatsoever and are not serving Scotland’s interests.