Draft Financial Regulators' Powers (Technical Standards Etc.) and Markets in Financial Instruments (Amendment) (Eu Exit) Regulations 2019

Peter Grant Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 General Committees

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and Members will be relieved to hear that I intend to be brief. That is not a matter of inclination—not my style at all—but a matter of necessity before my voice gives up altogether.

I did not catch the number of statutory instruments that the Minister was so proud to say have been pushed through, or how many still need to be resolved before 29 March, but coming from a Government who boast about easing the burden of regulation on businesses, that seems more than a shade ironic. None of those regulations are designed to make anything better—at best, they will keep us where we would have been had the Government’s unilateral decisions following the referendum been different.

Having set the ball rolling, set the timetable, and created the danger of a no-deal Brexit, and having identified the avalanche of legislation that will be needed to cope with that, the Government failed to timetable the legislation properly. That is why, two years after article 50 was triggered, there is such a panic to get all these regulations through, and why Parliament is sitting now when Members should be back in their constituencies working. That was done not to give time to debate regulations such as these, but to allow the clock to tick forward for another four or five sitting days, so that the regulations can legally be considered before 29 March.

It is extremely concerning, although perhaps no wonder, that major financial services, businesses and employers have already decided that they do not have confidence in the United Kingdom, London or Scotland as centres of financial services to the same extent as they did previously. That does not mean that those services will disappear but—depending on which analysts we believe—between €1 trillion and €2 trillion of assets are being, or have been moved out of the United Kingdom as a result of Brexit. It will take a long time for that confidence to be restored and those jobs to return.

The Minister has consulted the financial services sector. Because of the time limit that the Government placed on themselves, I understand that there was no time for a full-scale consultation with everybody who might be affected, but it is a pity that they did not listen more to the financial services sector before they set the ball rolling in the first place. In Scotland, and in the City of London, the financial services sector is clear. If they have to do Brexit, which they do not think is a good idea, we should stay in the single market, as that would immediately ease a lot of the concerns about the application of regulations post-Brexit.

Would any of the secondary legislation that the Minister has been or will be responsible for between now and 29 March have been necessary if the Government had listened to financial institutions and agreed to stay in the European single market? After all, that would have been perfectly compatible with the referendum decision of 2016.