Financial Services Reform

Callum Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

It is always a great pleasure to come and give evidence to the hon. Gentleman’s Committee. I reassure him that the Government are upholding the ringfencing regime. We must strike the right balance between protecting financial stability and safeguarding depositors. Equally, we think that there are some flexibilities that should be explored within the ringfencing regime that will allow further growth and further capital to be deployed in the real economy.

[Callum Anderson (Buckingham and Bletchley) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement and commend the work that she and the Chancellor have done on the wider Leeds reforms. I want to pick up on the forthcoming campaign to promote retail investment, which has the potential to reshape public understanding of risk, reward and financial planning. The problem with many similar campaigns is that they have failed to reach the people who most need them, so can the Minister provide a bit more detail about how the Treasury intends to work with both the financial services industry and civil society to ensure that the campaign delivers measurable benefits and improvements in financial capability across the whole population?

[Emma Reynolds]

My hon. Friend is a great campaigner on this issue, and he is absolutely right: this is not an easy nut to crack. We will work closely with the industry-led campaign. We need to give people who want to invest and save for the longer term the confidence to consider whether they can secure better returns through investing, rather than just holding large amounts—if they have those large amounts—of money in cash.