Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [HL]

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The consultation will be conducted under the Cabinet Office rules for consultations—so it will be more than three weeks. I cannot today tell noble Lords when it is going to start. The Treasury accepts that this is an important issue and has accepted the amendment. It wants people to contribute to the consultation—so, although I cannot give an exact date for when it will start, it will be a proper consultation.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My noble friend says that he is not in a position to indicate when the consultation shall start—but we are in May 2016, nearly half way through the year. That suggests that, if we are not very careful, it will be the back end of 2017 before anything happens. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, raised a particular family issue; and the noble Lord, Lord Wright, who is not in his place, raised one last year, if not the year before, relating to one son in Singapore and another in the USA. This is not a matter that we can just put into the long grass. I know that my noble friend is not doing that, but it is getting very near the outfield. I suggest that he should come back to the House and tell us exactly when the consultation will start and when we will get some substantive recommendations out of it.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I can reassure my noble friend, because the date that the regulations have to be brought in is June 2017, so the consultation will take place in the second half of this year. It will be implemented before June 2017. I think that that is pretty clear and there is no question of it being put into the long grass. I have subsequently learned that the consultation will be 12 weeks and it will be after July—so I hope that my noble friend will be reassured by that.

My noble friend Lord Flight basically implied that any enhanced due diligence for all Peers, MPs and MEPs would be ridiculous. The directive and the Financial Action Task Force do not agree. They think that anyone who is an MP should have some form of enhanced due diligence. Of course, there is a huge range that can take place within enhanced due diligence. The point of the amendment and the regulations will be to make sure that there is a true difference. A Back-Bench Peer who may not have the position to influence corrupt acts—although every Peer and MP has access to people, so they are not exactly like every citizen—will have some form of enhanced due diligence, but it should be proportionate. The way that this will be done will ensure that.

The banks are in absolutely no doubt about the Government’s view on this. The Chancellor has personally written to the heads of the large banks, and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury has written to colleagues. Every bank now has a contact person with whom Peers, MPs and MEPs can get in touch if they feel that the enhanced due diligence is too great.