Financial Services and Markets Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 7th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq]

I always want to listen to experts such as the trade bodies. The hon. Member has a wealth of knowledge in this area, and I accept what he is saying. Overall, the Labour party agrees with a lot of the policies in this Bill, which is why we have given it our wholehearted support. There are some missed opportunities that we feel could have been taken, and I think we could have strengthened our attractiveness for investments, as he is saying—I will come on to that later in my speech. I take his point, which is well made, and I hope the Minister will listen and will respond to it in his summing up.

Turning to my own amendments, I am worried about the lack of ambition in the Bill on strengthening fraud prevention. My new clause 1 would introduce the first national fraud strategy and data sharing arrangement for a decade. The National Audit Office, in its recent report, said that the Government simply do not understand the full scale of the fraud epidemic, despite the NAO calling for rapid action over five years ago. That is a damning statement. UK Finance has found that the Government’s failure to act on the fraud strategy and data sharing has seen the amount of money stolen from hard-working families’ and businesses’ bank accounts through fraud and scams hit a record high of £1.3 billion.

Despite that, in Committee, the Minister urged me to withdraw my new clause on the matter. He told me to be patient, and he told me that there would be a fraud strategy before Christmas. Now he is saying there will be one early next year, but how can we trust him not to kick the can further down the road? So I will be holding the Minister to account. There are only 24 days left until the end of the year, and people whose lives have been ruined by fraudsters cannot afford to be patient any longer.

Following our debate in Committee, leaders from across the financial services sector told me that the Government’s approach of placing data sharing responsibilities on the banks alone was stuck in the last century and allows tech-savvy criminals to get rich at the public’s expense. My new clause would put in place a data sharing arrangement that extends beyond just the banks to include social media companies, crypto-asset firms, payment system operators and other platforms that are exploited by criminals. If the Minister does not listen to the Labour party, I hope he will listen to the National Audit Office, businesses and victims of fraud, and finally give enforcement agencies the powers they need to crack down on criminals by voting for our new clause today. I also hope the Government will support my new clauses 2 and 3 and new clause 7, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh); because we have spent a substantial amount of time speaking about free access to cash I will not elaborate too much on that, but she has our full support.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that new clause 3, on access to banking, is particularly important? For many disabled and elderly people and others with mobility issues, and indeed for small businesses, access to banking as a whole, as well as access to cash, is hugely important; that has been very evident in my constituency.

[Tulip Siddiq]

My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for his constituents. I will speak about that later, but I feel that we politicians have a duty on this: even if there has been a decline in the number of people using cash, there is still a small group of vulnerable people who do so, and they risk being excluded if we do not save free access to cash and face-to-face banking services. We have a duty to our vulnerable constituents, disabled constituents and those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds who still rely on cash.