Financial Services and Markets Bill

Lord Vaux of Harrowden Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I opened my remarks by acknowledging that fraud needs a co-ordinated response from government, law enforcement and the private sector. That is at the heart of our approach, and it is why the Government established the Joint Fraud Taskforce to bring all those actors together. I attended it towards the end of last year, and it meets regularly. There are many different actors that need to take action in this space, including the regulators but also law enforcement, industry and companies—not just the financial services sector. Measures in the Online Safety Bill look at online platforms, for example.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

I apologise for interrupting, but all this would be a lot easier if we had the national fraud strategy. When can we expect it?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord. We can expect it soon—or imminently; I could use a variety of different descriptors, but it will be sooner than “in due course”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest: I am a trustee of the parliamentary pension fund. I am also a former chairman of a financial services organisation, Invesco. I have tried to put myself in the shoes of when I did that, some 15 years ago.

It comes down to what my noble friend has been talking about: the practical side of financial services. There have been major changes in the time since I last chaired an organisation, but the trustees of the parliamentary pension fund have a meeting this Thursday and we always have to balance the objectives of that fund, which is primarily to ensure that there are adequate funds to pay the pensions of our membership—that is the primary purpose of that organisation. Secondly, we have to respond to the laws of the land; indeed, because we are a parliamentary group, we are adamant that we should keep track of what is happening on the green dimensions as they affect financial services.

In her speech, which we have just listened to and which I was certainly listening to, my noble friend Lady Lawlor made it clear that, in her view, the amendments before us—with one exception, which I will come to in a minute—are, frankly, not practical. On Thursday, I will have to be practical. If anything, as matters stand at the moment, the amendments will handicap the financial services world. This worries me even more because it undermines competition. We must remember the primary new dimension that we are talking about in financial services: the requirement for growth. We look for the key kernel of that growth to come from the City of London and financial services in general. For my money, this is a stage too far. Having previously been an RAF jet pilot, I must say that, when I read about planetary limits et cetera in Amendment 69A, I think that that is going too far.

However, although I am not sure that it is ideally written, I think that there is merit in Amendment 240 —particularly proposed new subsection (1), which would require a reporting system on green material—in broad terms. Whether that is the right phraseology, I am not able to judge, but, from a practical point of view, I do not think that the amendments we have before us are appropriate at this point in time.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, as this is the first time I have spoken in Committee, I should start by declaring my interest in Fidelity National Information Services, which, among other things, owns Worldpay.

I support the amendments in this group—particularly those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to which I have added my name. She and other noble Lords have already explained the reasoning for them, so I will try not to be repetitive. I have added my name to them because I think that the climate and nature objective is so important that it deserves at least equal billing with the other secondary objectives of growth and competitiveness. For the record, I wholeheartedly support those growth and competitiveness objectives.

As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, a few moments ago, some have argued that the climate and nature objectives conflict with the growth and competitiveness objectives. Frankly, I do not believe that that is the case. There are always trade-offs, of course, but, if done well, encouraging and facilitating the financing of the technologies and businesses that will enable the path to net zero will be a substantial driver for growth. I want to see the UK financial market become the global leader in financing and facilitating these exciting technologies. I believe that there is an enormous opportunity for the UK here.

The noble Baroness talked about this being a somewhat parochial objective. I could not disagree more. This is a global opportunity. Just the other day, I was talking to the ambassador from Vietnam, a country that is looking to expand its offshore wind arrangements massively; it has the most perfect coastline for it. That is something that this country could be hugely involved in from both a technology point of view and a financial services point of view—that is, financing this stuff.

Another argument that I hear against the climate and nature objective is that it is a negative objective focused on banning and stopping activities. In my view—this is where I suspect I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle—a climate and nature objective should not be about, for example, preventing investment in companies that are involved in fossil fuels or other activities.