Draft Financial Services Bill (Joint Committee)

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

Obviously, Mr Speaker, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) led me down a very tempting path, and I will do my best not to be drawn down it again.

The draft Bill is a phenomenally large document. I am sure that on your evenings off, Mr Speaker, when you are drinking a glass of mulled wine, you will have had a chance to flick through its contents. It is a wide-ranging Bill that seeks, rightly, radically to overhaul our financial services industry. It is therefore right that the individuals from both Houses who are tasked with providing the legislative scrutiny are properly scrutinised themselves, because we are placing a huge amount of trust in their hands. I suspect, Mr Speaker, that if I were to go too far into the issue of trust you would rightly pull me up for it.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Members of both parties were implicated in various expenses issues. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that members of his own party who were so implicated should not serve on any Committee either?

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman asks a valid question. As a new Member who unseated a former Member who had to pay back thousands of pounds, I am very much alive to these issues. I absolutely believe that if someone is forced to pay back £56,000 to which they were not entitled because they had knowingly misled the taxpayer—the Fees Office—they should be excluded from being a member of a committee that oversees the new financial services regulation. That goes to the heart of the issue. If the hon. Gentleman does not agree with me, I respect that, but I hope that he will indicate that that is his view. I do not see him indicating dissent, so I assume that he agrees.