Financial Services Bill

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Quite a few more hon. Members wish to speak and the Minister wants to come in at 9.40 pm, so if we could help each other, I would be grateful.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I wish to join others in acknowledging the strong case that members of the Treasury Committee have made on the issues addressed in new clause 1. Like others, I do not think that new clause 1, in itself, goes far enough in resolving some of the Bill’s deficiencies, but it is a commendable effort.

As we are dealing with a number of proposals that appear on the amendment paper under the heading “Governance of the Bank of England and the new regulatory structure”, there is a danger that we might make the mistake of thinking that all the provisions are about issues inside the beltway; we may think that they are all about parliamentary influence, scrutiny and the relationships between the Financial Policy Committee, the Bank of England and the Treasury and so on. Of course, as we heard in the remarks made by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), many of these provisions touch directly on issues that we thought we were discussing in the previous grouping in relation to consumer protection and the consumer interest.

I wish to discuss a number of the amendments in this group that I have tabled, particularly new clause 13. It is aimed at dealing with what seems to be a fairly gaping loophole in the Bill and relates to provisions in clause 25, on page 108, and the regime for consolidated supervision of the parent undertakings of financial institutions. The provisions in the Bill as they stand would mean that the only parent undertakings that will be regulated under consolidated supervision are those that were deemed to be financial institutions, whereas those that were not deemed to be financial institutions would be immune.