Financial Conduct Authority Redress Scheme

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Guto Bebb

Thursday 4th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb]

Of course not. The whole reason behind establishing the redress scheme is to try to deal with the wrongdoing of the banks. My concern is that the scheme has not succeeded as expected.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

rose—

[Guto Bebb]

I will take one final intervention; otherwise I will be told off by Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Paul Farrelly]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the level of provisioning in the banks suggests that there is inconsistency? For instance, in RBS there were 7,300 cases and £1.4 billion of provisions, while in Barclays there were 2,900 cases and £1.5 billion of provisions.

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. There have been concerns throughout the process about the level of provision within banks. In view of some of the information provided by the KPMG whistleblower, RBS’s confidence in having a very low level of provision probably justifies its attitude to the review.

Another point about the lack of consistency relates again, unfortunately, to the behaviour of RBS. It has been argued that a good result for a business from the redress scheme is to have a full tear-up of the agreement or to implement a cap rather than a swap. Indeed, it has been argued that a cap would in many cases have been a much better original product. From the detail of many of the caps offered to RBS customers, it transpires that most of them are for 10 years. I do not claim to be an expert, but experts in the field of derivatives and interest rate protection tell me that there is no demand in the marketplace for a 10-year cap. They have challenged RBS to give one example of a 10-year cap that it has sold commercially in the past 10 years, but as yet RBS has not come back with such an example. Yet, time and again when businesses are offered a cap as an alternative product, the cap is for 10 years. It will not surprise hon. Members to learn that a 10-year cap is significantly more expensive than a five-year one. That added cost comes out of the redress made available to the relevant businesses. There are therefore questions to be asked about the behaviour of some banks, including RBS, and those questions raise doubts about the consistency of the scheme.

On transparency, I am concerned that the agreement between the banks has not been disclosed. That means that it is very difficult to assess the success or otherwise of an outcome, because we do not know what to measure it against. The agreement has not been made available to the all-party group or the Treasury Committee, but I must ask why, because when the FCA says that it is robustly ensuring that the agreement is maintained, we cannot assess whether that is the case.