Nicholas Brown
Main Page: Nicholas Brown (Independent - Newcastle upon Tyne East)Department Debates - View all Nicholas Brown's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend was prescient in making his case. He has pointed to something that concerns a number of people: the apparent ability of, for example, authorities in the United States to use criminal sanctions, while the authorities in the UK have not been granted those powers by Parliament. That is precisely what we are looking at.
Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)
The Government’s new financial services regulatory architecture puts a lot of power and responsibility on the shoulders of the Governor of the Bank of England, but proposes no change to the relationship between the regulator and Parliament. May I ask the Chancellor to reflect again on the relationship of the House and the other place with the regulator, and how best we can establish a continuing—not adversarial—dialogue with the regulator so that problems, such as the one that he has shockingly reported to the House, can be explored and reflected on in a mature way, and not subjected to party political point scoring?
Mr Osborne
Of course, it is important that the regulator, including the Bank of England, is accountable to Parliament for its actions, and has to answer for its actions, while at the same time—and I think that there is cross-party support for this—we maintain the independence of the Monetary Policy Committee and the Governor in his role. The Financial Services Bill includes many new tools to increase accountability to Parliament and to the public. In the White Paper that accompanied publication of the Bill, we set out further changes that we are making in the House of Lords to increase that accountability.