Financial Services Bill

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

There is a large number of amendments in this group, that focus on consumer credit and the best interests of consumers. I want to concentrate on two in particular—Lords amendments 25 and 78.

Lords amendment 25 was extracted from the Government and we are glad that they gave way on it. The amendment will henceforth make it clear that the new Financial Conduct Authority will have a requirement to ensure basic access to financial services particularly in deprived areas and neighbourhoods where some of our banks and financial institutions do not necessarily think that they can make millions and millions of pounds. That is the hope placed on the shoulders of the FCA. The key question is whether the regulator will roll up its sleeves and use the full extent of the powers that the Bill should provide. I, for one, will be seeking a very early meeting with the new chief executive of the FCA to extract commitments on how it intends to use the new powers.

It should not have taken months of persuading and cajoling Treasury Ministers for them to accede to the changes. Perhaps it was the fresh air provided by the new broom, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, sweeping clean with perhaps more of an open mind than his predecessor on some of these issues. If that is the case, I commend him for it. We need to begin to look at the detail, so I have a series of questions for him, starting with Lords amendment 25.

There are already what some people call lending deserts. In some communities, bank branches are not as readily available as they are in other, more affluent areas. In some deprived areas of the country, it is hard for consumers to access affordable credit. The key word—affordability—is of course now well known. If people want to be completely ripped off, they can pay for high-cost credit, often on a very short-term basis, with immense interest rate charges that can accumulate and get them into severe jeopardy. That will lead to further financial exclusion if they cannot keep up with the repayments, and to them being trapped in a spiral of poverty.

It is important to hold the big five banks to account. As large institutions, they are not just private companies with no obligations beyond and above those that rest on the shoulders of any other private company. In this day and age, they are a social utility and have a duty to the community to ensure that all parts of the country have access to basic banking facilities. The work of the financial inclusion taskforce, under the previous Administration, sought to ensure that basic bank account facilities were available. With the onset of universal credit in April 2014, it will be even more important for everybody to understand and have access to those facilities. However, I am increasingly worried about the fragile deal put together under the previous Administration to support and extend those basic services. There are signs of a creeping onset of charges. As banks come out from the era where the taxpayer was essentially keeping them going, they are now starting to look to the consumer to extract more charges. I do not want a situation where banks get together and think about introducing basic charges on current accounts, especially for those who are taking care to ensure that they are in credit. There are worrying signs that that might be in the air. Even the regulators have started to say, “Well, let’s start charging a little bit for in-credit current accounts. It might be a way of ensuring we don’t have to charge such high costs for unauthorised overdrafts.”

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend talks about regulating to ensure that these bank accounts remain available. Sometimes, if people find themselves being charged for an account, they simply give up, because it is too expensive, and sometimes they cannot open another account, because they have got into difficulty. That has been the experience in the past few years. I hope that the regulators will be alive to those issues.

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[Greg Clark]

This excellent debate has covered a number of issues that colleagues from all parts of the House feel passionately about, and correctly so because they are of huge importance to all our constituents, especially the most vulnerable in our society.

In the short time available, I wish to address some of the points that have been made directly by hon. Members. The shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), asked how the powers would be exercised by the Financial Conduct Authority. The powers come directly from the FCA’s remit, and he will be aware that the Bill establishes a far-reaching consumer protection objective. The overall objective is

“securing an appropriate degree of protection for consumers.”

The Bill goes into detail to require the FCA to consider the following: the different degree of risk to be tolerated by different types of consumers; the different needs of different types of consumers for the provision of information; and the general principle that those providing financial services should be expected to provide consumers with a level of care appropriate to their needs. I think that colleagues would recognise that this is a far-reaching objective which gives quite general powers to protect consumers, and it is right that that should be so.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned basic bank accounts, on which some progress continues to be made. There is no universal legal right to a basic bank account, but the industry guidance still stands. It states that if a consumer asks to open a basic bank account and meets the qualifying criteria, the firm should offer them an account and that banks can refuse to open an account for a customer only where the customer has a history of fraud or is an undischarged bankrupt. Those provisions continue.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The previous Government had proposed creating exactly such an obligation, but the Minister’s predecessor, in a debate I had with him in Westminster Hall, refused to contemplate any such provision. Has there been any change of mind on the part of the Government?

[Greg Clark]

I did not have the privilege of participating in that debate, but I can tell the hon. Lady our policy. I also wanted to talk about the very important matter that the hon. Member for Nottingham East and several others raised about the transparency of the information that should be provided, as is the case in the United States, on the actual practice rather than just the intentions of lenders. This is a particularly important point, and what we have said in public—I mentioned this to the Chairman of the Treasury Committee earlier—is that the Government are working with the industry to get a commitment from the banks that they will publish granular data on their lending, particularly in deprived communities. We are meeting the British Bankers Association shortly on that. We have been absolutely clear that if we are not satisfied with that information we will use the forthcoming banking reform Bill to legislate to that effect. That will concentrate minds and I think everyone will be aware of the importance of that question.

It is important to address the context in which we are operating. The Financial Conduct Authority must not regard itself simply as a regulator of incumbents, although it has important responsibilities in that regard. It also has the important objective that my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) mentioned, which is to promote competition. I regard the degree of competition in retail banking as unacceptable. I would like to see more new entrants and I would like them to concentrate, in particular, on reaching those parts of the market that existing incumbents find it difficult to reach. I have made it absolutely clear in the meetings I have had with the shadow Financial Conduct Authority that the competition objective is to be taken extremely seriously, and I and my colleagues in the Treasury will be looking for progress on that.

--- Later in debate ---

The UN has done some work, and some academics around the world think there is a problem with derivatives based on commodities, and that just as sub-prime markets were an unseen problem for too long, there may be problems now that we cannot see. That is what makes benchmarks and indices so important. We need verifiable, trustworthy numbers that we can investigate to ascertain what is happening in global food markets. As I have said, this is not a techie, dry subject that matters only to economists and those who pore over numbers; the reality is that it matters to every one of our constituents, but most especially to those with the least money to spare.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that trading in commodity derivatives can skew investment and whole industries if not properly regulated? For example, I visited the jute museum in Dundee, where one display made the point that the jute lords made more from trading in futures than they made from production. That might have made them less interested in diversifying their manufacturing industry, which has completely died.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for that highly appropriate intervention. When the history of Great Britain is written, it will show that that part of the east coast of Scotland has had a great influence on economics throughout. The example from Dundee is a good one.

All hon. Members look back at global financial trading and markets and wonder how we got to the situation we found ourselves in. When the shadow banking market and complex derivatives and products were created, people became much more interested in them than in the real economy and the fundamentals of our economy. They saw the financial system as a servant to the rest of the economy rather than the other way around. I hope that view is shared broadly on both sides of the House. The Minister is nodding, but I am not entirely sure he agrees with that specific point. I will live in hope and imagine he does.

When the Minister is consulting on whether to broaden the Bill’s reach from the indices that I have mentioned to commodities, will he consider the impact of escalating food and oil prices not only on his constituents and mine, but on those who live closest to the extreme poverty line in the poorest countries? Will he consider the price of maize and wheat in very poor countries, where there is no social support system and no welfare state security net of the sort we have in this country? Will this country take a leading role in properly understanding what is happening in that market?