Financial Services Bill

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Barnett]

It behoves me to say thank you to the noble Lord. It is hard to believe that the amendment that my noble friend and I tabled has now been accepted. I do not know what to say. Thank you is the only thing I can say.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, given the persistence of my noble friends in debates throughout the Bill as regards “may” and “must”, I imagined that their efforts would result in one signal victory, and this is it. We appreciate the Government’s movement on this point.

I accept what the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, said about the public interest being considered before a matter is laid before Parliament, but that in normal circumstances Parliament should be informed. I am very grateful to him for the fact that the assurances which he gave in Committee have been amply fulfilled with these amendments.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, my remarks will change the atmosphere of “love fest” between the two Front Benches with regard to the “may/must” question. There seems to be a semantic problem here in that “must” appears in new Section (2) proposed by Amendment 107D, which one could interpret to mean must. Unfortunately, however, new Section (3) proposed by the same amendment converts “must” into “may”, because it says that if the measure is not in the public interest the “must” does not apply. That shows how difficult it is to draft Bills, particularly in circumstances such as these. I assume that lawyers will flourish when they read “must” in proposed new Section (2) and then discover that the Treasury has decided that it is not in the public interest to publish a direction, and therefore “must” no longer applies. I thought that I ought to add that to the otherwise very pleasant interchange to which I have been listening.