Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, I thought the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, was going to come in. I welcome these clauses, although these four new clauses add even greater length to the Bill in addition to the amendments that have been made. The rate at which this Bill has been growing has been quite extraordinary, and we shall have to wait and see how it ends up. I remain rather concerned at the way in which drafting has taken place. My noble friend might consider whether it would be appropriate to have some form of consolidation Act bringing together this and previous legislation. If the legislation is to be understood by bankers, or indeed by anyone, it will be necessary to correlate the various provisions which will exist after we have completed our debate. We have four new clauses at Third Reading, which is subject to tight rules.

I have merely one or two points. I am glad the ideas put forward by Mr Paul Volcker in the context of proprietary trading have been recognised as important. I have had many interesting exchanges with him, both as a Minister and as chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, and indeed in relation to the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland, a quite different thing. He has been wise in all that he has said, but the problem is putting wise ideas into legislation.

As my noble friend has just said, if the Financial Times in the past few days is anything to go by the American legislation is going to be over 1,000 pages, while over here we are going to have a review and then a review of the review. This is going to take some time. Meanwhile the American legislation may be in place. What are we doing to co-ordinate the approach? This is an international matter. There are British banks operating in America and American banks that operate here. It would create considerable difficulties were the rules in one country to differ significantly from those in the other. A degree of international co-operation as soon as possible will be important if, as we all want, we are to ensure that proprietary trading does not carry both the risk to which my noble friend Lord Lawson referred and dangers in general to the banking system.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, I ask whether the independent review under Amendment 3 is on the same basis as the review carried out by the PRA under Amendment 2. Amendment 2 specifically refers to the risk factors that proprietary trading embraces, but there is no reference to that in Amendment 3 with regard to the independent review of proprietary trading. Is the second, independent review to be undertaken on a wider basis than the PRA review? Will it be able to look at some of the broader cultural aspects of proprietary trading by banks? I hope that question is not too late in the day for the Minister.

[Lord Deighton]

I thank noble Lords for those questions. In response to my noble friend Lord Higgins, with respect to proprietary trading and international collaboration and co-operation, that is the approach that we shall be espousing. On consolidation, this is structured so as to be integrated into existing legislation, thereby ending up with a consolidated result.

With respect to the question of my noble friend Lord Phillips, I confirm that the independent review of proprietary trading will not be constrained in what it can examine.