Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [Lords]

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add

“this House, whilst noting improvements made to the Bill in the House of Lords, declines to give the Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [Lords] a Second Reading because the Bill fails to increase oversight and accountability of the work of the Bank of England, because the Bill reduces regulation of financial services and because the Bill removes the reverse burden of proof with regard to personal responsibility in the Senior Managers and Certification Regime which was introduced following the cross-party Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and enacted in the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013; and considers that there is no evidence base to justify the removal of the reverse burden of proof which has not yet been implemented.”

The regulation of financial services has been discussed at length and legislated upon in this House since the financial crash, with the Financial Services Act 2012 and the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 being passed, and this Bill now being brought to this House. The Bill is made up of two parts: first, amendments to the structures of the Bank of England; and, secondly, regulation of financial services. We believe that the Bank of England should carry out its work in the most efficient way possible, with transparency and accountability in its decision making, serving the interests of the people who have sent us here to represent them. We also believe that senior bankers and others in the financial sector should be effectively and appropriately regulated, in order to deliver a banking culture that is free from the systematic greed and reckless risk-taking that precipitated a bankers’ crisis of historic proportions in 2008.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that Labour rescued the banks in 2008 and that now the Conservatives are selling off RBS shares at a loss to the taxpayer?

[Richard Burgon]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and she is correct. It shows what disregard the Chancellor has for the taxpayers’ coffers and the public purse—he is also showing that in his numerous meetings with Google and their shoddy outcome. Financial stability and the effective regulation of our banking and wider financial services industry are vital in ensuring that the sector serves the interests of the whole economy, does not hurt ordinary people or small and medium-sized businesses, and delivers vital investment that our country needs for long-term growth. Getting the balance of regulation right is an important task for any Government, one that Governments around the world have failed to fulfil in the past decade. It is a task that has been attempted since the bankers’ crisis of 2008, but today the Government are threatening to set back this task.

The context of the Bill is vital to understanding our concerns, and the reasonable concerns and demands of the public. We are eight years on from the economic crisis—the bankers’ crisis, which brought the financial services sector and the country to its knees. Banks that were too big to fail were bailed out by the state.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman was not here then, so he can form a dispassionate view. What has he learnt about the mistakes the regulators made under Labour, when we saw all those excesses that he is now talking about?

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. At the time, Conservative Members were calling for even lighter regulation, but what is clear, and what I will illustrate, is that Labour Members have learnt the lessons of the banking crisis but that this Bill shows they have not been learnt by Conservative Members. Eight years on, bankers’ behaviour and bankers’ bonuses remain in the news. Court cases and institutional fines continue, with hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of fines issued, yet still only one person is in prison, despite all the damage done. Despite a series of commissions and reviews, there remains too little evidence that the lessons of the bankers’ crisis have been learnt. We should all know that the public remain angry at what a number of top bankers did to our economy and our society.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and I strongly agree with it. Was it not astonishing that before 2008 those in the private banking sector did not appear to spot the crisis that was coming? They were too busy making money hand over fist for themselves.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has extensive experience in these matters, for that. Troublingly, the people who now say there is no risk of a financial crisis ever again were the very same people in the very same sector who were saying before 2008 that everything was fine and there was no risk of disaster at the time. Sadly, how wrong they were! Despite what the bankers did to our economy and our society, about which there was entirely justified anger among the population, the Chancellor has cunningly turned the bankers’ crisis into a crisis of public spending, and has adopted a policy of spending cuts to vital services to which there seems to be no end in sight. In looking at this Bill, it appears that the Chancellor believes that he can now turn back the clock in the banking and financial sector.

Under this Chancellor, things are going in the wrong direction. For example, he sold off shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland at a very significant loss to the taxpayer; he appointed Angela Knight, who was head of the British Bankers Association during the financial crisis and who defended the top bankers during the crisis, to head up the Office of Tax Simplification in the Treasury; and he decided he could do without the continued services of the respected chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, Martin Wheatley. I am sure that he is delighted with the new appointment, as we have been told by the Minister that Mr Wheatley’s successor is fine with the abolition of the reverse burden of proof. I wonder whether Martin Wheatley, who departed prematurely, would have said the same.

The FCA’s planned public review into banking culture has now been cancelled, and its investigation into the promotion of tax evasion by HSBC has been brought to a premature conclusion. I know that we will be hearing more about the FCA in another debate this evening.

The Bank of England and Financial Services Bill was originally drafted, according to the Chancellor at a Treasury Committee meeting, to make changes to the Bank of England’s structure. One important concern is that it includes a major change to the regulation of senior bankers, undoing a key measure taken after the bankers’ crisis to change senior bankers’ conduct and to deliver transparency and accountability to financial decision making. I am talking about the presumption of responsibility—or the so-called reverse burden of proof.

We welcome the extension of the senior managers regime to senior managers across all regulated financial firms, but we do not accept the Government’s case for ending the presumption of responsibility for the top managers in banking.

The presumption of responsibility, as currently set out, applies to senior managers. It means that, to avoid being found guilty of misconduct when there has been a regulatory contravention in an area for which they are responsible, they will have to prove that they took reasonable steps to prevent that contravention. This Bill removes that onus on senior bankers. The onus is entirely reasonable, proportionate and, as bitter experience tells the British people, entirely necessary. Misconduct and misdemeanours in financial services are not merely a tale from history. In 2015, for example, the FCA had to fine firms more than £900 million. There was also a LIBOR scandal, foreign exchange fines and the mis-selling of payment protection insurance to the value of up to £33 billion.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

At the conclusion of her speech, the Minister indicated that by voting against the Second Reading of this Bill Members would be putting the public at risk from further bank abuses. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that, by voting against this Bill and getting it changed so that the reverse burden of proof is put back in place, we are safeguarding against the abuses of the past?

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for putting that necessary point so powerfully. People outside this place will be shocked to hear that, as a result of this Bill, senior bankers in the top firms will have less guards on their personal responsibility.

[Harriett Baldwin]

rose—

[Richard Burgon]

I do wish to make some progress. [Hon. Members: “Give way!”] I will give way.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Further to that point, the measures that he seems to object to so much are in clause 22. Why is he voting against Second Reading when there are many other excellent measures to which he presumably does not object?

[Richard Burgon]

It may be that others can explain to the Minister the real purpose of a reasoned amendment in these circumstances. I think our action is entirely right.

The presumption of responsibility is so reasonable and necessary that the policy was introduced with cross-party support. That should not be forgotten. It was originally proposed by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, led by the Conservative right hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and Labour’s Lord McFall of Alcluith, and it was the Liberal Democrat Lord Newby, a Minister in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, who moved its introduction into law. I have to echo a point previously made by the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan), sitting on the SNP Front Bench, that it was passed as recently as December 2013, and the presumption of responsibility has yet to come into effect. It was meant to come into effect in March this year, and it remains untested. We must remember that this was a safeguard brought in by the very same Chancellor who is now seeking to scrap it.

[Mark Garnier]

The presumption of responsibility has not gone. The senior managers regime absolutely includes the presumption of responsibility for everybody in these institutions. The hon. Gentleman may have had a number of conversations with some of the banks being affected by this, as I have, and I served on the banking commission that brought in the reverse burden of proof. What is interesting is that the banks are now complaining bitterly that the reverse burden of proof has now been reversed, because that managed to be a tick-box operation and they now have a much more onerous responsibility for management than they ever had before. This is a far stronger measure for ensuring probity for the managers of banks than the reverse burden of proof.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is experienced in these matters, for his intervention, but every time we have received correspondence from, and listened to, bankers on this matter, they seem desperate for the reverse burden of proof to be scrapped. They say how dreadful it would be, how it was totally unjustified and that business as usual is fine—that we can just return to things with no risk of a repeat of the financial crisis of 2008. Unfortunately, I believe they were wrong, but we need to remember that this presumption of responsibility, or the reverse burden of proof, was a safeguard brought in by the very same Chancellor who is now seeking to scrap it.

In 2013 the Chancellor said he had

“called for a thorough and intensive investigation into how to improve standards in the banking system and the PCBS has delivered. I am pleased to say that the government will implement its main recommendations.”

Of course one of its main recommendations was this presumption of responsibility.

On that occasion, the Chancellor was not alone. This was his Bill and Conservative Members backed it. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, clearly explained that his Government were introducing new rules to promote higher standards for all bank staff and were reversing the burden of proof so that bank bosses are held accountable for breaches within their areas of responsibility.

The Conservative Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) was briefly on the Treasury Committee, and he said:

“It is critical to bringing about the individual accountability that many of us want to see across our financial services sector, with the tough senior persons regime, reversing the burden of proof and criminal sanctions for reckless misconduct. All those steps are vital”.—[Official Report, 9 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 261.]

His party colleague, the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), said:

“I do not think there can be any doubt about the merits of reversing the burden of proof…The Government’s announcement that they will reverse the burden of proof is extremely welcome.”—[Official Report, 8 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 119.]

I could go on, but instead I ask this question: what has changed? What, or who, has so dramatically changed the mind of the Chancellor? At the Treasury Committee in October the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) put the question many of us are thinking when he asked the Chancellor whether the proposed scrapping of the presumption of responsibility was “largely as a result of lobbying by the banks, which has the flavour of getting stronger.”

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an interesting argument in a powerful speech. Does he agree that the Chancellor had said he had not met the banks in the lead-up to the general election, but apparently he has met bankers on five separate occasions since the general election—presumably to discuss the contents of this Bill? Is he concerned, as I am, that the Chancellor might be the victim of Stockholm syndrome and has become a prisoner of the bankers and their financial interests?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burgon]

Of course it is correct that the Chancellor meets senior bankers, but what concerns me and many people outside this place is that the Chancellor appears to be acting in their interests alone.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Following comments made to the media by Robert Jenkins, a member of the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee, that the regulators and their political masters were captured by banking leaders in the run-up to the meltdown, is my hon. Friend concerned that the Bill shows that the Government are still being captured by banking leaders?

[Richard Burgon]

My hon. Friend hits upon an important point. The role of a City Minister, a shadow City Minister and of the Government is not to represent the interests of the City to the population, but to fulfil their democratic function. A Government are not there to take orders from the City of London. Yes, we must listen to the City of London and value its contribution, but we are not its political representatives on earth.

On the Chancellor’s change of mind, the Chair of the Treasury Committee put it well when he asked his Chancellor a very reasonable question: “Why did you not wait for the regime to come into force to enable an assessment of it, how it works, before implementing this further change?” That was an extremely serious question. The change is based on no evidence, which is the worst kind of change.

Banks are having to put significant effort into identifying and establishing new procedures to meet the requirements of the 2013 Act, which received cross-party support in Parliament. The issues were already abundantly clear then, but now the Conservative Government have performed a dramatic U-turn and are not willing even to test the procedures that they initially supported. It is rare for an important measure to be abolished before it has even been introduced.

How will the public feel when they learn that the Chancellor is scrapping a duty on senior managers in banks—a duty that was welcomed as necessary on a cross-party basis—before it has even been implemented? The public’s deep concern about the behaviour of some senior bankers should extend to the Chancellor, who, it appears, is doing the bankers’ bidding, not the bidding of the British people. Do not the Chancellor and the Government understand the widespread anger of the public and their mistrust of the banking system? The public are right to remember that, because of the bankers’ behaviour, people whom this House is meant to represent lost their homes and their jobs. We should never forget that it was the bankers’ crisis that caused the deficit that this Government have relied upon as their justification for their political choice to cut our public services, cut funding to our local authorities, cut the incomes of working people and cut support for the most vulnerable people in our communities.

[Mark Garnier]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. I am sorry to be a pedant, but in 2005 there was a £43 billion budget deficit. There was a deficit long before the banking crisis, and there was a structural deficit that the banking crisis brought out.

[Richard Burgon]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s pedantry. With respect, he makes a point that does not bear too much political scrutiny. The global financial crash caused the huge increase in the deficit and stalled the economy. It also gave the Government the opportunity to carry out their long-harboured ideological desire, decades old, to cut public services and wither away the state.

The Bill comes to us from the other place, where there was considerable debate at every stage. The Bill has changed, following a number of amendments proposed by the Government. In our reasoned amendment, we recognise those changes as improvements, and they are welcome, but the Bill has not changed significantly enough. As I mentioned, the Bill is in two parts, and on the first part—on the Bank of England’s structures—we recognise that the Government have made some positive movement, although it is insufficient. We recognise that they have moved on aspects of the oversight powers of the Bank’s court of directors, but the directors’ forum for discussion—the oversight committee—remains abolished.

We also recognise that the Government have moved on the proposed power of veto for the Bank’s court of directors over National Audit Office investigations, but the memorandum of understanding referred to in the Bill remains under negotiation and unpublished. On other aspects, in the House of Lords, there was no agreement. I wrote to the Chancellor asking that the memorandum of understanding be presented to this House during the passage of the Bill. I am glad to say that the Economic Secretary responded, explaining that it is not yet complete and is subject to ongoing discussions between the Bank and the National Audit Office. She explained that she will write to the Governor of the Bank of England and the Comptroller and Auditor General at the National Audit Office to see whether they will be in a position to share the draft memorandum of understanding during the passage of the Bill. In such an important matter, it can only be right for the House to have sight of that crucial memorandum of understanding. Any other approach would be a cause for concern.

The Bill replaces the Prudential Regulation Authority with a new Prudential Regulation Committee. Peers on both sides—including Government peers—expressed concern that that represented a downgrading and threatened a loss of independence.

As I have discussed at length, the Bill also replaces the presumption of responsibility with a duty of responsibility. Opposition peers challenged that on Report, and the Government’s measure scraped through by only 200 votes to 198. If I believe what I am told by the Minister, scrapping the presumption of responsibility is entirely uncontroversial and entirely reasonable. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and the issue gives us particular cause for concern in the wider context of the Chancellor’s new settlement with financial services.

We need a healthy and effective banking sector that is appropriately regulated, that serves the interests of the whole economy, that does not hurt ordinary people or small and medium-sized businesses, and that delivers the vital investment our country needs for long-term growth. The Conservative Government climbdown on the presumption of responsibility, which they previously supported, will hinder, not help, the fulfilment of those ambitions. Personal responsibility is vital for the operation of our regulatory systems. The Chancellor’s policy U-turn reduces exactly the personal responsibility that the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards recommended in its 500-page report. Scrapping a key measure before it has even had the chance to be tested makes no sense—unless, of course, the Chancellor is just following bankers’ orders. The startling and precipitous scrapping of a widely welcomed measure shows that there is a very real risk of failing to learn the lessons of the bankers’ crisis.

Our concerns go much wider than the presumption of responsibility, to the role of the Governor, the work of the FCA and the programme of selling off, for example, Royal Bank of Scotland shares at a loss to the taxpayer. The Chancellor’s whole approach says, “Let’s get back to business as usual.” However, it was the bankers’ business as usual that brought Britain to the brink; it was the bankers’ business as usual that caused the deficit. Returning to business as usual will make another financial crisis even more likely, with disastrous consequences for those we are meant to represent in this place, and that—to clear up any confusion on the part of the Minister—is why we are asking the Government in our reasoned amendment to think again today.

[Several hon. Members rose—]