Financial Services and Markets Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Massey of Hampstead and Lord Holmes of Richmond

Report stage
Monday 7th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. As this is the first time I have spoken on Report, I declare my technology interests as set out in the register, as adviser to the Crown Estate and Simmons and Simmons LLP and as non-executive director at Avalanche Foundation and Avalanche (BVI) Inc. I shall speak to Amendment 8, which I had pleasure in signing.

How many brands or businesses have we in the UK that have been on our high street for over half a millennium? That is what we have with the post office, which rode into our lives in 1511 and continues to have just shy of 12,000 branches up and down the country. Whatever happens with digital—and finance certainly is going to become, and already in many areas is, digital—we need, and must support, physical presence and human access to, and interaction with, finance, not least for those who find themselves at the sharpest end of financial exclusion. As I have already mentioned, financial inclusion often and perniciously goes hand in hand with digital exclusion, compounding both of those exclusionary forces.

The post office has a unique role. Of course, it has had well-known difficulties recently, but that does not diminish the potential role it can play as other financial services providers retreat, and have already retreated, from so many of our high streets. It can be the core of the community with inclusive, accessible finance at that core and rippling out all kinds of other financial, digital and small “s” social services. It has such positive potential. We have seen this with the hub model, and I would be interested in the Minister’s response as to whether the Government believe we have enough hubs, whether the plan for hubs is ambitious enough and whether we need to bring other players into this hub model to ensure that, wherever you are, whoever you are, in the country, in socioeconomics, you can have effective access to finance and through that meaningful, sustainable and often physical access to cash and financial services. I very much look forward to the Minister’s response to this amendment.

[Lord Massey of Hampstead (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support Amendment 10 from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, to add a few of my own concerns on Clause 3 and to support the remarks made earlier on this matter by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer.

Protecting customer access to essential banking services is, of course, a goal we all share. However, the granting of such wide-ranging executive powers, basically conferring almost unlimited powers on the Treasury for this matter, seems unnecessary, even allowing for the understandable desire to act quickly. The Treasury’s own review of in-person banking access does not report until October, as has been mentioned, and we are being asked to legislate before we know the nature of the problem we are solving or the policy decisions that might follow. Would they be proportionate? Would they be effective? We really have no way of knowing this at this stage and do not even have the benefit of seeing the report.

The Treasury’s memorandum to the DPRRC seeks to narrow these powers when the review concludes, so the Government are implicitly aware, I assume, that the delegated powers are too broad. But the answer is not to grant excessively wide powers now and then tidy up later; surely it would be better to wait or bring back a properly balanced set of powers when the evidence exists. I offer my support to Amendment 10, which would delete Clause 3 altogether.