CAPITAL REQUIREMENTS (AMENDMENT) (EU EXIT) REGULATIONS 2019

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 General Committees

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Bailey. I very much agree with what the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said; the SNP shares the official Opposition’s suspicions about areas related to the Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill, which—as hon. Members will remember—did not even reach Report.

The regulations flag up the fact that this will be an ongoing issue. As the EU continues to make changes, we will have to make changes here to get any type of equivalence with it. I remind the Minister that equivalence determinations are akin to building a house on sand: they are very much at the discretion of the Commission and can be withdrawn at very short notice. If we do not match the EU’s regulations, that equivalence may end up being withdrawn, to the detriment of our financial services industry in the UK—particularly in Scotland, which did not vote for this but is being left to deal with the consequences and chaos that result from it. The Minister said that the regulations reflect a new piece of EU legislation that has recently become applicable. I suppose that that is part of the chaos that we now face: the EU is moving on without us, and we are left picking up the pieces.

On the financial services Bill and the suspicions of the hon. Gentleman, I must ask the Minister: are the regulations a workaround for the Bill? Are they a means of escaping the scrutiny and the amendments that I supported for the greater regulation that we need?

Will the Minister tell us more about the powers that are going to the FCA and the PRA and away from this House? How will the House maintain scrutiny of those institutions and of the rules and regulations? There will be a need for adaptation and change; how will he make sure that the House is given a full part to play—not just a statement or an update—in administering the regulations in the years ahead?

This all highlights our lack of voice and influence in future EU reforms. We will be abiding by the rules, because otherwise we will lose the opportunities for our financial services market, but we will not necessarily have influence in making them—in areas in which for many years we have had the advantage because we have a large majority in the types of industry that will be affected. We will end up in a weaker situation than we are in at the moment, particularly in a no-deal Brexit in which we cannot guarantee that we will have the equivalence or access to markets that we require.

Further to that sense of weakness, we have yet to see from this Government a full picture of what the financial services framework will look like. I have asked for that on all the Committees that I have been on, because we need to know what the framework will look like. This is being done with a hasty, piecemeal approach. We are being asked to come here not quite at the last minute, as the Minister pointed out, but with 24 days to go till Brexit, when we may end up with no deal. There are Committees sitting all the way along this corridor this afternoon and later this evening to get these last-minute preparations done, but we do not know what the picture will look like in the year ahead.

To give some degree of stability in planning to the organisations, institutions and people in the financial services industry, I urge the Minister to bring forward some kind of clear framework so that we can see where we are going. This piecemeal approach, this last-minute chaos of bringing things forward, this move towards more Brexit red tape rather than less, as I am sure the Brexiteers would want—none of it is adequate or particularly seemly. I urge the Minister to do a lot better on this, because it is absolute chaos.