Financial Services Regulation

Lord Darling of Roulanish Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to set out his proposals for the future of financial services regulation and for the role of the Bank of England.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

In 1997, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), as Chancellor, established, without any consultation and without telling Parliament, the tripartite system to regulate the financial system. In doing so, he removed from the Bank of England its historical role in monitoring overall levels of debt in the economy. It is well known that the late Eddie George was deeply unhappy with that decision. It is also well known that the tripartite system that the right hon. Gentleman created, and that his successor as Chancellor sustained, failed spectacularly in its mission to ensure stability in the financial markets, and the failure of certain banks cost the taxpayer a vast amount of money. Indeed, British taxpayers funded the largest bank bail-out in the world, and it was only in Britain that depositors queued in the high street to get their money back.

The British people rightly ask how this new coalition Government will learn from the mistakes of their predecessor. The coalition agreement commits us to reforming the regulatory system for financial services in order to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis, and that is precisely what we will do. First, on the structure of regulation, our plan is to hand over to the Bank of England the responsibility for macro-prudential supervision, which should never have been taken away from it. The tools for macro-prudential supervision are the subject of ongoing international discussions. We are playing a full part in that process at European and G20 level, along with the Governor of the Bank and the chairman of the Financial Services Authority. It is already clear that the tools will include capital requirements that work against the cycle, rather than with it.

The coalition Government are also committed to handing to the Bank of England responsibility for the oversight of micro-prudential regulation. It is clear that the central bank needs to have a deeper understanding of what is going on in individual firms. My hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will give further details of the institutional arrangements in a parliamentary statement tomorrow. It is important that the institutions involved correctly follow their own internal procedures before those arrangements are made public, and the Governor of the Bank will be talking to the court of the Bank this afternoon.

The coalition Government will also deliver on their promise to establish an independent commission on banking. The previous Government would brook no debate about the future structure of the banks, the relationship between retail and investment banking, and the questions of how best to protect taxpayers and how to ensure greater competition in an industry that they actively sought to consolidate. The previous Prime Minister did not want anyone to challenge his opinions, but we cannot ignore this debate about the future of banking—indeed, I want Britain to lead it. We will therefore establish the commission on banking to investigate those issues. It will be chaired by Sir John Vickers, who is a former chief economist at the Bank of England, was one of the first members of the Monetary Policy Committee and is a former chairman of the Office of Fair Trading. He is a man of unquestioned experience, integrity and independence who approaches this issue with an open mind. I am today placing in the Libraries of both Houses the terms of reference and we await the conclusions of the commission.

Unlike the last Government, this Government are prepared to confront the difficult challenges of the regulation and structure of the banks. We are prepared to learn the lessons of what went wrong, even if they were not.

[Mr Darling]

I am grateful to the Chancellor for that answer, and I wonder whether I might press him on a number of points. First, he says that the Bank of England will have responsibility for macro-prudential supervision, but he also says that the debate as to what macro-prudential supervision consists of is still up for grabs as it is still being debated internationally. When does he expect those discussions to be concluded?

The Chancellor also says that the Bank of England will have some responsibility for micro-supervision. It has been suggested in some quarters, for example, that the Bank of England, rather than the FSA, might have dealt with whether the Royal Bank of Scotland could take over ABN AMRO. Does he not realise that far from clarifying the situation, this is adding another complication? The risk is that we will have a dog’s breakfast of a regulatory system in which no one knows who is making decisions and no one knows who is in charge. Does he not accept that at a time when there is still a great deal of uncertainty in the banking world and a great deal of turbulence, the last thing that we want is a situation in which it is not clear which organisation is responsible for precisely which activity? If both the Bank and the FSA are responsible for regulating institutions, that is bound to lead to confusion and inevitably runs the risk that mistakes will be made.

Will the Chancellor also tell us whether, in relation to the Bank of England’s responsibility, he is planning any reform to the financial stability committee or any internal reforms so that a committee will advise the Governor? If that is the case, will the Governor be making those decisions or will a committee do so, perhaps on a wider basis? Will he also tell us whether or not Lord Turner, the chairman of the FSA, agrees with his proposals and whether he is now prepared to serve, in effect, as a deputy under the Governor of the Bank of England?

In relation to the proposal to break up banks, will the Chancellor explain how Northern Rock, which was a very simple retail bank on the face of it, would have been saved from collapse simply by virtue of the fact that it was a retail bank and not an investment bank? Will he also explain how his proposal would have made any difference to Lehman Brothers, which did not take a single retail deposit but was a complex investment bank that collapsed with calamitous consequences? Will he tell us, too, whether the commission that he proposes to set up will consider the break-up of British banks such as Barclays or HSBC? Will he tell us how the uncertainty that will inevitably be caused by the work of the commission will help to rebuild the financial stability that we want? At a time when there is that instability, does he not think that it would be far better to keep the FSA working on what it is supposed to be doing—that is, the day-to-day supervision and regulation—bearing in mind that some small minor decisions are sometimes very important, especially if they are the wrong ones?

Is it not the case that the proposal was made in the first place because the right hon. Gentleman was looking before the election for a dividing line between him and the then Government? What we have today is something that has been cobbled together, that is ill thought out, that will add to uncertainty and that runs a grave risk that further mistakes will be made with catastrophic consequences in the future.

[Mr Osborne]

The dividing line is between a Government who want to learn the lessons of what went wrong and an Opposition who have no intention of learning from all the mistakes that they made in office. I find that striking.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about a dog’s breakfast. What about the dog’s breakfast of the tripartite system that allowed the Royal Bank of Scotland to fail and that allowed Northern Rock to fail? He was the Chancellor at the time and he completely failed to see the growing levels of debt in the economy. He and the institutions that were created by his predecessor completely failed to see what had gone wrong in individual institutions. The thing I find extraordinary—perhaps Opposition Members will reflect on this—is that their shadow Chancellor is setting them against reform of the regulation of banks and reform of the structure of the banking industry. That is what he has just done. What we are going to do is to have an open debate about the structure of banks. That debate is happening in the United States of America, in the newspapers of this country and in parliamentary debates here. The only place it was not happening was in the last Government under his chancellorship.

We think that the sensible approach, in order to resolve these issues—[Hon. Members: “Answer the question.”] I am answering the questions—every single one of them. We think that the sensible approach is to set up an independent commission under Sir John Vickers to examine these issues and to take into account the different, strongly held views. For example, John McFall, who was the Chair of the Treasury Committee in the last Parliament, has in recent days put his name to a report that calls for structural reform of the banks. The shadow Chancellor might want to ignore his views, but I want to listen to them and to take them on board as part of an independent commission, and that is exactly what we are going to do.

When it comes to the international context, I think that all of that will enable us to lead the debate. Of course, we have to agree this at an international level, where some of the macro-prudential tools are. As the shadow Chancellor knows, there is a debate taking place in the G20. We hope, in the Seoul summit in November, to have come to firm conclusions on the capital, liquidity and leverage requirements. When we have come to those agreements and when we have international agreement on what those standards should be, we will need a regulatory system here, at home, that is fit for purpose, so that they can be implemented.