Royal Bank of Scotland (FSA Report)

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

I understand the frustration expressed in the hon. Gentleman’s question. We need to look carefully at the proposals in Lord Turner’s report and we will have the opportunity to legislate in the Financial Services Bill, if appropriate, but the hon. Gentleman would not want me to engage in a knee-jerk response to a report that was only published first thing this morning. I want to ensure that we have the right measures in place, whether through company law or regulation, to ensure that we have good-quality people running such organisations.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The report makes it clear that had the Basel III legislation been in place, the AMRO transaction could not have happened. Will the Minister confirm that it remains his intention to implement Basel III as soon as possible and ideally before 2019?

[Mr Hoban]

It is our commitment to implement Basel III. We want to ensure that it is implemented consistently across the whole of Europe in capital requirements directive IV and we are pushing for member states to have the freedom to go further and raise capital standards when they believe it is in their interests to do so. We want to see tougher regulation of banks and that requires better and more capital and better and more liquidity.