Compensation (London Capital & Finance plc and Fraud Compensation Fund) Bill

Sally-Ann Hart Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The Treasury deserves great credit for introducing this compensation scheme in the first place. It is a pity that the Minister responsible—my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary—is not on duty today, because he deserves personal credit for that, but the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) is an excellent stand-in.

Warren Buffett once said that what we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. The key lesson that we have to learn from this sorry episode—a damning assessment of the Financial Conduct Authority’s capability as a regulator at the time—is the need for scrutiny of the regulator. As many Members know, I do quite a lot of work trying to hold banks to account in the all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking, but I still do not know how this place holds the regulator to account. I know that the Treasury has some direct influence, and the Treasury Committee can write reports and conduct inquiries, but I still do not know of a direct mechanism that can be used by this House to address regulation and regulations.

Now that we have repatriated the oversight function from the European Union, various different suggestions have been made as to how that might happen in this House. One of the most interesting proposals is for something along the lines of the Public Accounts Committee—a regulatory accounts committee, supported by a version of the National Audit Office, so that professionals would sit behind a parliamentary committee made up of elected parliamentarians. Whoever holds the regulator to account should be accountable to the public; they should not be an independent body of appointees. There must be a mechanism to make sure that the regulator does the right thing, makes good on its future commitments and ensures that episodes like this do not happen again.

The Gloster report, which led to the compensation scheme that we are putting in place today, made very damning criticisms of the then governor of the FCA, Andrew Bailey, who is now the Governor of the Bank of England. I have experience of dealing with the FCA and Andrew Bailey—I asked him four times whether he had followed the FCA’s own whistleblowing procedures when handling the case of Sally Masterton’s whistleblower complaint with HBOS Reading and Lloyds. He refused to answer that question, which I find horrendous. Both the FCA and the whistleblowing legislation were established by statute, yet we as parliamentarians cannot hold the regulator—which we put in place—to account. We need a better system of regulatory oversight.

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

Residents in Hastings and Rye have been victims of London Capital & Finance. Does my hon. Friend agree that if people do something in good faith, get the right advice and the right system is in place, there should be measures in place to ensure that they do not end up on the back foot?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

As I said on Report, it is incumbent on investors to check out investments. If something is paying out 8% when they can get 0.5% from their bank, they must say, “Well, this is more risky than simply putting it in the bank.” We cannot lose sight of that principle. However, the least we can expect is a regulator that is proactive. In 2015, a number of people were raising concerns about LC&F, including an independent financial adviser who wrote in detail to the FCA to say what was happening at LC&F, but the FCA did nothing for four years, which is totally unacceptable. People deserve a higher standard of regulation.

On the Online Safety Bill, London Capital & Finance spent £20 million on Google advertising. It is clear that platforms are playing a role in this. This was not even seen as a scam. We can argue that it was a scam, but it was to some extent regulated by the FCA. UK Finance has released a report today saying that online scams are now a national security risk. We must take seriously its calls for more action to be taken. The Online Safety Bill must be the right place to legislate to require the platforms to at least establish whether the investment companies—the people who are advertising investments—are bona fide organisations, and not simply people impersonating them.

With that, I will conclude. I am keen to hear the Minister’s words in his summing up.