Financial Services: Mansion House Speech

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She has done an enormous amount of work in this area, and I applaud her for that. She was instrumental in the Government taking our initial steps to regulate the “buy now, pay later” sector. There is a need for “buy now, pay later” during a cost of living crisis, and people will access those companies’ products, but I have brought this under FCA control so far, and have regulated to ensure that it is safer, and that people do not store up a huge amount of debt that they cannot pay back. The consultation is open until 29 November, and I ask her to urge others to feed into it to ensure that we get this policy right; that was not done by the previous Government. I will bring forward legislation as quickly as possible, but I thought it was important to hear what people and the industry had to say, because we want to regulate properly. She is being patient, and I ask her to be a bit more patient; our intention is to make the sector as well regulated as possible under the FCA.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I warmly welcome much of what was announced last week—the work on listings, mutuals and the remit refresh—but I say to the hon. Lady and the Minister for pensions that there is considerable reticence in the pensions industry when it comes to many of the drivers of change highlighted last week. We need a complete cultural shift and change in appetite from those who lead the pensions industry. I urge her to keep under review the fiscal incentives, and the transparency and accountability rules, so that we can see the performance gap that results from not making some of these changes. I look sympathetically on the aspirations that she has set out today, and I wish her well as she moves forward with these critical changes, which should have a lot of support from across the House.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I know that the right hon. Member did a huge amount of work in the financial services sector while he was in office. The civil servants still talk about how amazing he was—much to my dismay sometimes! We agree that there needs to be a change in appetite in this place. Transparency is top of the list, as the Minister for Pensions just whispered in my ear. We thank the right hon. Member for his constructive approach on the review, and urge him to tell the people he knows in the sector to respond to and feed in to the consultation.