Draft Financial Regulators' Powers (Technical Standards Etc.) (Amendment Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018
Debate between Sarah Champion and Lord Beamish(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Jones
He did try, to be fair to him; he is not a bad Minister. This puts a spotlight on a cost of Brexit that is not being factored in. Those 800 SIs will all have a cost to them. It would be interesting if the Minister supplied information about not just the number of SIs relating to this regulation, but the estimated cost of each of them, including the cost of preparations by the Department. That will be a huge cost across Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East and the hon. Member for Glasgow Central made a good point about the capacity of the Bank of England, PRA and FCA to implement this and take over this responsibility. I have sat on many Committees since I have been in Parliament, and I do read the explanatory notes, even when the subject is boring or dry, as this may be. Uniquely for an explanatory note on a piece of legislation, no costs are included in this one. It will be interesting to see if all the SIs we get have explanatory notes in which no costs are included, as though this were a zero-cost game.
There is not just the question of what the SI will cost; there are other costs. Clearly, the tasks being taken on by the Bank of England, the PRA and the FCA will involve cost. If we are to do justice to the transparency of the Brexit process and those claiming great wins for the taxpayer out of it, the full extent of those costs needs to be known. It is unfair on those organisations to be given extra responsibilities but no cash to go with them, unlike other parts of Whitehall, where hundreds of millions are being spent employing new civil servants. This is a hidden cost of Brexit. This is one piece of legislation; how many times will it be duplicated across Government? I suggest many, many times, adding up to millions and millions of taxpayers’ pounds.
The explanatory notes state that no consultation was done, although the statutory instrument was published in draft in April. The notes say:
“The financial services regulators plan to undertake public consultation on any changes they propose to make to Binding Technical Standards or rules made under the powers conferred upon them by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 using the powers delegated to them”.
The important point there is about who will decide. Will there be ministerial or parliamentary oversight of what is in the consultation? Who draws it up? Is that left to the regulators to do? There will obviously be controversy on the issue that the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay raised, and people will complain about it. Again, how will that be dealt with? Will Parliament or a Minister have any say over the regulators and how they conduct the consultation? It is said that the devil is always in the detail, and that was clearly demonstrated by the hon. Gentleman.
There may well be unintended consequences to taking on some of these regulations. There may well be better ways of doing things—I do not disagree with that—but where will the political pressure to get the authorities to change the regulations come from, if there is simply a general consultation? For example, someone has already decided that the regulation the hon. Gentleman referred to does not need looking at, but Parliament does need to look at it. Ministerial oversight is needed—not just of the draft regulations, but in a whole load of areas. Basically, we are delegating our responsibility to determine what should and should not be looked at to statutory bodies. In many cases, we might have a very different view from regulators.
We are all told that the draft regulations are being put in place for the nightmare scenario in which we do not get any deal in the negotiations that are taking place. I am interested in what happens to the SI if we do get a deal. Can the Minister explain—he may not be party to this—where this small piece of possible legislation is in the great negotiations? What happens if we get a deal? Does the SI fall?
As for regulators taking over these responsibilities, what will happen in future? Let us suppose we get no deal, the draft regulations go through and we try to transpose everything into UK legislation—this point was made eloquently by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central. What happens if our regulations get out of kilter with the EU regulations? Clearly, the sector is not based on a single company; We are talking about global business—money moving around the world—that does not recognise boundaries. What is the mechanism to ensure that if there are changes in EU regulations, we reflect them, or take them on board directly? Again, will that be left to the regulators? Will they decide which option we take, or will the decision come back to Parliament?
If such decisions are to come back to Parliament, we will be very busy in a whole host of areas for years to come. Basically, when EU regulations in this or any other area change, how do we ensure that we are not at a competitive disadvantage, or that the regulations for institutions based both in the EU and here do not somehow clash? This is not easy. It demonstrates one of the problems with what someone—I cannot remember who—on the leave side said: they said that that the deal would be the easiest ever done. No, it will not. This demonstrates in one small area the technical detail that will hit us.
I worry, because if our regulations are rather weaker—the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay seems to think that our savers or investors are disadvantaged by the current regulations—and savers and investors are somehow less protected, that leads us to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central about what came out of the 2008 crash. What we needed was not more regulation for regulation’s sake, but international regulation to ensure that people in this country investing in a pension fund that might be investing overseas were protected, and vice versa. When people ask, “Will these dry regulations affect ordinary people?” the answer is: yes, they will if we get them wrong. That is why this is important.
Police Funding Formula
Debate between Sarah Champion and Lord Beamish(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I thank all those who have spoken in the debate. My hon. Friends have detailed the impact of cuts to police funding on their constituents and their police forces. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) and the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless) for reminding us that the police are trying to do an incredibly difficult job despite the cuts and pressures that they face. The whole House thanks them for that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) was extremely helpful in setting the broader context for the debate, which could not take place at a more important time. Any debate about police funding must be put in the context of the crucial role that the police play, protecting children and vulnerable groups, getting justice for victims and keeping communities safe. As the Home Affairs Committee report says,
“The demands on the police are many and various”.
To give just one example, through my own campaigning work I have found out more and more about the scale of child abuse in the UK. It is truly shocking. The most recent data from the NSPCC estimate that half a million children are being abused. Reports of domestic and sexual violence are increasing across the country.
Mr Kevan Jones
I commend my hon. Friend for her work in that area. Does she agree that that puts pressure on regional forces such as Durham’s, which is involved in Operation Seabrook, investigating abuse at the Medomsley detention centre—an operation that has cost more than £2 million?
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that issue, which I have tried to raise in this Chamber. Such cases are incredibly expensive and incredibly important, and that work needs to be done, but there is no additional money, so the money is coming from the existing pot. The Government really need to look seriously at funding those cases.
The numbers of serious and violent crimes are soaring. In the last year alone there has been a major increase in knife crime, which is up 9%, and a 27% rise in violent crime, including a 14% rise in murder. Devastatingly, 50% of those cases close without a single suspect ever being identified.
Central Government funding for police forces was cut by a quarter in the last Parliament, resulting in the loss of 18,000 police officers—12,000 of them operational front-line officers. Thousands of PCSOs and civilian staff have also been cut. We have ever fewer police officers trying to do ever more.
The value of local neighbourhood policing, with officers working in partnership with local authorities and other agencies to tackle the challenges we face, cannot be overestimated. However, neighbourhood policing teams—a proud legacy of the Labour Government—are being eroded. Serious crimes are up, but victims are being let down.
Despite all that, and after cutting the police by 25% in the last Parliament, the Government were threatening to cut at least a further 22% right up until the night before the comprehensive spending review. We were on the brink of catastrophe, but the Chancellor U-turned under pressure from Labour, the public and the police [Interruption.] And London MPs.
The Chancellor then made a promise:
“I am today announcing that there will be no cuts in the police budget at all. There will be real-terms protection for police funding. The police protect us, and we are going to protect the police.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1373.]
That promise to the public and the police has been broken. The Chancellor said he would protect the police, but police budgets are still being cut. Police force funding for 2016-17 has not been protected in real terms. Budgets are being cut again—for the sixth year in a row—at a time when the country faces increased risks.
Figures from the House of Commons Library show that the overall Home Office grant to the police next year will not be protected in real terms or even in cash terms. The Library’s analysis shows that forces in England and Wales will receive £30 million less in cash—a cut worth £160 million in real terms. Even the extra council tax that Tories expect local people to pay to make up for the cuts will not compensate for that.