Financial Services and Markets Bill [HL]

Lord Wilson of Sedgefield Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st July 2026 Grand Committee

Relevant documents: 2nd report from the Delegated Powers Committee (Northern Ireland and Scottish Legislative Consent sought)

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to address a few key areas before we begin. First, we are starting today with the debate on an adjourned group. Only those noble Lords present earlier in the week at the start of the group should contribute. We have a list to help manage that. I am expecting, based on the adjourned debate, that debate will go straight to Front-Bench contributions.

Secondly, on the general rules, I remind noble Lords again that they should declare any relevant financial interest the first time they speak at each stage of the Bill. This means that, in Committee, relevant financial interests should be declared during the first group to which the noble Lord contributes. The declaration does not need to be repeated in debate on later groups at this stage. The declaration should be specific and brief. Members should briefly indicate the nature of their financial interests and not simply refer to their entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests.

I remind the Committee of the guidance in paragraph 8.82 of the Companion that, when withdrawing amendments, noble Lords should be brief, need not respond to all the points made during the debate and should not revisit points made when moving the amendment. A number of contributions made when withdrawing amendments on previous days were lengthy. I encourage all participants to keep their remarks short, in the spirit of the Companion.

Debate on Amendment 99 resumed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)]

My Lords, I sometimes think that a useful thing to do with the Minister would be to sit down with him with the rulebook and go through some scrutiny. Perhaps he might then begin to see the scale of the task.

As I have said, when I chaired the ECON in the European Parliament, the committee there had nearly 100 full and substitute members. All of them were capable of doing work in specialist clusters, doing legislation and scrutinising everything. It was basically a full-time job—they did it all day, every day—and it did not even have anything to do with what was happening in supervision.

This task is not within the capacity of a national Parliament. The Minister was out of the Room when I explained that Australia had a royal commission, as part of its post-financial crisis review, to look at what went wrong with regulation. As royal commissions do, it took a long time. When it finally reported, it came to the consultation that an oversight body was needed; similar has been done in New Zealand and the United States, where they have powerful oversight over all of their regulators.

It is unreasonable to suggest that a committee that sits once a week for three hours could in any way touch this issue. Our committees are really good at doing specific inquiries into problem areas, but they cannot see things across the piece. That is what I described as our first need, when we left the EU. It has perhaps taken some people who do not have my experience a while to gain an understanding of how much it would take, but it happened pretty soon afterwards because, a year later, when the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, came forward with his proposals, the Industry and Regulators Committee had already realised that we needed more.

Then there is, as I said, a second need, following on from the Bill, which has distanced us further away because we do not even have the things we are supposed to measure. We do not have the information. Clause 16 creates the strategy—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Can the noble Baroness take a seat, please?

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I think that the Committee would like to hear from the noble Baroness.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

As I said at the start of this session, when it comes to withdrawing an amendment, noble Lords need to be brief. We do not want them to rehash the whole debate. They have to be respectful to the Committee because we have other amendments to discuss.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

We are a self-regulating House, and this is such an important area that I would like to hear the end of the noble Baroness’s remarks.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that this is a self-regulating House, but the other side of the coin is self-discipline.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)]

I am sorry, but I am replying to the Minister, and I have to say some things again because he was out of the Room. I am trying to explain that the Bill introduces a second need, because we will no longer have access to the information. It is going into a strategy and there is no link to operational duties, no reporting or guidance, and the annual report is only about competitiveness and growth. We are short of the basic information on which we are supposed to do this scrutiny: it is not coming to us; it is being rubbed out by the Bill. It is no good saying that a committee of this House—able, competent and hard-working though the committees are—can do it when you have taken the basic information away. That is the point. There is the fundamental size need, and then the removal of the information need. We need this independent body for the first need and, my goodness, we will jolly well need it if the Act ends up being anything like the Bill is now.

I think we will all want to return to this on Report, but for now, I will withdraw my amendment, even though the Minister seems to think that he has the equivalent of a perpetual motion machine and that something will happen with no input.