Royal Bank of Scotland (FSA Report)

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

That is an important question. I referred earlier to the pressure under which Tony Blair put the FSA to adopt a proportionate regulatory regime. One of the examples put to the then Prime Minister about the light-touch quality of the regime was the fact that there were only six people supervising HSBC, and even fewer have been supervising RBS. I understand that there has been almost a fourfold increase in the number of RBS supervisors, and I think that that is a much better approach. We must ensure that there is intrusive, intensive supervision, and that requires not just more resources, but a higher quality of resources.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the report. I think that the proposal to debar directors from high office in future should be implemented so that we can ensure that rewards are not received for failure at the top, but will the Minister also consider the proposal to debar others mentioned in the report who were culpable?

[Mr Hoban]

I think that we should give careful consideration to the idea of debarring people who have been incompetent and mismanaged their leadership of institutions. That applies to the directors of those institutions, but it may also apply to the politicians who designed the system in the first place.