Interest Rate Swap Derivatives

Roger Williams Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith). Like many hon. Members, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), who has shown immense leadership and tenacity on this case—not just in this debate, but more generally.

If any of us had thought that the constituency surgery meetings that we have held on this issue were unique, the turnout for the debate has illustrated the enormity of the problem. We should repeat, repeat and repeat again the point made by the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel): of the 30,000 cases, only 32 have been redressed.

I was going to talk about the inadequacies of the redress scheme, welcome though was its initiation and the progress that has been made, but time will limit what I can say about that. However, I will talk later about the fundamental omission of tailored business loans, which was alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy.

My hon. Friend mentioned a constituent of mine, Mr Mansel Beechey of the Llew Du hostelry in Aberystwyth. I think that my hon. Friend has spent a bit more time in that particular pub than I have over the years. Mansel Beechey and many small business owners like him have been the backbone of the Ceredigion economy, but there have been times when I have thought that we were being targeted. The number of tourism and agricultural businesses that have come to me about these issues has been frightening. Bully-Banks helped us by putting an advert in the local newspaper about the scandal and many more cases came to light.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that there are yet more small businesses out there who are ashamed to come forward and say that they have entered into such products because they think that it is their fault, rather than that of the banks?

[Mr Mark Williams]

We need to knock that on the head immediately, because there has been a concerted effort by the banks to target certain businesses. There is no need for people to be ashamed, and my hon. Friend is right that many more cases are coming to light.

Huw and Jackie Roberts of Minhafan Estates, a property development business in Aberystwyth, are in the midst of the review. They went through the “fact find” interview stage of the review six months ago and are still waiting to hear from the bank or the FCA.

I want to talk about the inadequacy and even dishonesty of the subject access requests. A sheep farmer who came to see me obtained his subject access request from Barclays, but it included presentation documents that he was alleged to have been shown at the time of sale, which he had never seen before. History can be rewritten. The fear is that, in some of these cases, history is being rewritten by the banks.

Why is the FCA advising customers that the scheme

“can deliver fair and reasonable redress without them needing to hire lawyers”?

Many of my constituents are on the brink and cannot afford to hire a lawyer, but why is the FCA saying that?

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy, I want to talk about alternative products. What is wrong with this form of so-called redress is that the banks get to propose what would have happened if they had behaved better. Despite the banks admitting that they have breached regulatory requirements, they are being given a second chance through the promotion of alternative products, so they have a second bite of the proverbial cherry.

Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy said that the cost of the review was £200 million, and he then told us that it had gone up to £450 million. Despite it costing £450 million to set up the review, only £2 million has been paid out in redress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) for the work and energy that he has put into this matter. The businesses in my constituency would certainly like to thank him for giving them hope of a successful resolution to some of their problems.

The banks seem to have adopted a herd mentality. When one of them discovers a profitable financial product, all the others have to pile in as well. It makes me wonder what work the banks actually did, before interest rate swaps started to be sold, to set out the risks to their customers. They might well have done some work on their risks themselves, although taking a turn on both sides of a swap and putting none of their own resources at risk probably involved very little risk to them. There might be more risk now that they are to be held to account and might have to pay for consequential loss. I am sure that there are many people in the banks who do the important work of horizon scanning. It would be interesting to know whether they examined the scenario of how very low interest rates would affect their clients.

I also want to pay tribute to Bully-Banks. It is a self-help group that has brought people together and given them more confidence to take on the banks and pursue their rights. I attended a Bully-Banks meeting in south Wales, which gave me an indication of the scope and scale of the problem, and of the different businesses involved. It became clear that a particular class of business that seemed more likely to be targeted by the banks was the well-established business with a fair degree of security, often in the form of property. That description certainly applies to a constituent of mine, Mr Evans from Ystradgynlais. He is seeing his way through this process at the moment, and his business is now secure, but he is still desperate to ensure that Barclays, which he believes has treated him very badly, puts his business back into the same condition that it was in before.

Mr Evans managed to get a facility with Barclays, and he was just about to sign it off when a salesman appeared. His name was Mr Shafto—never has a man been more appropriately named. Mr Shafto, who was very active in south Wales and the west of England, told Mr Evans that he had better sign up quickly because there were lots of victims—he probably used the word “customers”—who were desperate to see him, and he needed to get on a train to go and see some more. Mr Evans signed off on that agreement after only a short discussion. Surprisingly, he did not have to make use of the facility, so he ended up with the swap without having used the facility. We have seen instances of these swaps being mis-sold in the past.

Mr Evans runs a highly successful packaging business that deals with many of the pharmaceutical companies in this country. He has often had offers to buy the business, but he has resisted because he sees it as a family business that has given him security and that will give his family security in the future. Little did he know that the biggest danger of him losing his business would be created by the bank with which he had such a good relationship in the past.

If there is a bit of good news to come out of this debate it is that HSBC has announced that it will separate the technical redress from the consequential loss. I hope that all the other banks will come together and agree to do that as well. Mr Evans has been reluctant to accept an offer of technical redress because he thinks that it might compromise his consequential loss. He might now be in a position to take that money, however, and pursue his consequential loss at some point in the future. I shall finish by quoting a few words from the end of an e-mail from Mr Evans. He said:

“The mis-selling was a scandal. The resolution is an even bigger scandal.”