Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill
Debate between Cathy Jamieson and Lord Tyrie(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Cathy Jamieson
Once again, my hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The general public expected the industry to show some humility and make every effort not only to repay the taxpayer, where appropriate, but to reflect on its actions, perhaps take the view that this culture was now outdated and move on and operate differently.
The general public’s concern will not be alleviated by the latest list of scandals. We have had LIBOR, EURIBOR, PPI—payment protection insurance—forex, yen LIBOR—the list seems to go on and on. Almost every day, every week, every month, something else is being put into the public domain. We have recently heard concerns about lending from RBS, with businesses having gone into administration. It is right and proper, of course, that these issues are investigated. We continue to talk about these issues, but however much we will things to change, people are concerned that if the bankers do not accept that their culture has to change, we will just continue to talk and put legislation in place, but without the messages having got through. I believe that the general public are particularly concerned about that.
As I said, we believe that the amendment unsuccessfully launched in the other place should remain in the Bill. I am disappointed that the Government have chosen to disagree with it and want to strike it out. I do not expect the Minister to change his view at this stage. I am sure he will revert to the position held in Committee, which was to disagree with us on this matter.
Mr Tyrie
Before addressing the amendments in the group, I would like to say a few words—this is the only and last opportunity to do so—about the work of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. The task that Parliament set it was
“to consider and report on: professional standards and culture of the UK banking sector, taking account of regulatory and competition investigations into the LIBOR rate-setting process”
and on
“lessons to be learned about corporate governance, transparency and conflicts of interest, and their implications for regulation and for Government policy…and to make recommendations for legislative and other actions.”
That was a very large canvas. The backdrop was a profound collapse of trust in parts of the banking sector—triggered by, among other things, deep lapses in banking standards.
We should bear it in mind, however, that the banks were only partly responsible for all these problems, and that the commission’s proposals represent only part of the solution. On the first point, responsibility for the problem also lies with regulators, central banks, Governments, auditors, risk-rating agencies and consumers, both retail and wholesale, who over-borrowed. They all need to take their share of the responsibility.
On the second point—finding the solutions—the Banking Commission’s proposals need to be set alongside both reforms to the regulatory structure, such as the creation of the Prudential Regulatory Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority after the abolition of the Financial Services Authority, and the structural reform of the banks, as proposed by Sir John Vickers.
I doubt whether the Government or the man who led the regulatory changes, Sir John Vickers—or indeed any member of the Banking Commission—thinks that, even taking together all the proposals we have put forward, we can solve everything. In any case, many on the commission were sceptical about the extent to which culture can be changed by legislation—a point made from the Front Bench earlier this afternoon. Legislation can, however, play an important role by incentivising good behaviour and penalising bad. Nevertheless, we concluded that, if fully implemented, our proposals should put us in a better place to protect taxpayers and the country from systemic risk and to protect consumers from lapses in standards.
As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) said a few moments ago, there will continue to be regulatory failures, so only with the exercise of judgment and a good deal of vigilance are even these proposals likely to make a big difference in the long run. Our job today is narrower—to complete the task of making sure that those responsible for exercising that vigilance have the statutory tools to do the job.
Cathy Jamieson
The hon. Gentleman mentioned proprietary trading. Is he now satisfied that the Government’s recent actions take account of all the commission’s recommendations?
Mr Tyrie
Broadly, yes. Given that I am already stretching things a little in my opening remarks, I will try to deal with prop trading at the most appropriate parts of my speech—but the short answer is, as I say, broadly yes.
The commissioners met yesterday to discuss progress. We believe that the Government have converted the lion’s share of the Banking Commission’s recommendations into statutory action, where required. It is worth listing what has changed. The following amendments have been made to the Bill in order to implement our recommendations: electrification of the ring fence has been considerably improved since Commons Report stage; an independent review of the ring fence, which can consider the full separation of the banking industry, has been introduced; the Banking Commission’s recommendations on prop trading, which we just discussed, have, for the most part, been implemented; the proposals for the senior managers regime have been improved; a certification or licensing regime has been added to the Bill; a proper definition of a bank—the Bill’s definition was defective when it left this place, and it was a major lacuna—has been added to the Bill; the PRA has acquired a competition objective to complement that of the FCA; and audit requirements have been tightened for systemically important firms.
Furthermore, a good number of undertakings and assurances have been given in response to specific recommendations. Most importantly perhaps, the bank will almost certainly be given the Financial Policy Committee responsibility for the leverage ratio, and the Government have said that they will legislate to that effect after a review. We would otherwise have had to wait until 2017-18 to have that considered.
Mr Tyrie
In some cases, the “deal”, as the hon. Lady called it, is accompanied by a memorandum of understanding, in order to achieve exactly the result that we intend by means of special measures. However, the primary purpose of special measures is to provide a tool that need not lead to escalation and full enforcement. That is a step back from the example given by the hon. Lady.
We were also assured that there would be a review of the system of enforcement decision making, which is currently very unsatisfactory. We had proposed that the regulatory decisions committee should be separated further from the enforcement division of the Financial Conduct Authority and given statutory autonomy in relation to its decisions. The Government did not accept that proposal, but they did accept the need for the issue to be re-examined and the need for a fresh and independent pair of eyes to look at each enforcement action before it proceeds, and a review is now to be carried out.
The important issue of remuneration was raised, later in her remarks, by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun. The PRA has committed itself to aligning the maturity of the rewards for bankers with the maturity of the risks that they have incurred. That is crucial. It is the collecting and taking of bonuses in return for the creation and selling of a new financial instrument or tool when, although the full risks will not mature for many years, the individuals concerned have had the money in advance that has created so many misaligned incentives and so much poor behaviour. Those individuals need to know, even several years later, that there may be a clawback, or, better still in most cases, that their bonuses are deferred. They need to know that the product had better be robust enough to survive the test of time before they start selling it.
Let me now mention a few measures that the commission did not succeed in inserting in the Bill. I shall not describe any of them in detail—although I note that when I have tried to deal briefly with the measures that I have described so far, Members have intervened to ask me about a number of them.
Both the Select Committee and the commission concluded that the governance of the Bank of England was still in a mess, and would have to be sorted out. The Bank of England still has no board worthy of the name, and the cross-cutting lines of responsibility and accountability between various new institutions are, to put it mildly, very confused. One of the most senior people in the Bank told me recently that he thought the situation was like the Schleswig-Holstein question: the former Governor probably understood it, and one other guy had forgotten it—and the third was this person himself, whose name I had better not reveal on the Floor of the House.
We also failed to achieve change with our proposal to abolish United Kingdom Financial Investments Ltd. UKFI has been exposed as a fig leaf: it seems to be of very little practical use. The Labour Government’s intention in introducing it was good, but when the Government want to intervene directly in the activities of institutions they simply do so, and UKFI does not seem to be performing the “buffer” function that was intended for it.
We argued that the regulator should have a duty to compensate whistleblowers who had been disadvantaged by their firms. There are still risks, at least perceived risks, for whistleblowers, which will tend to deter them. It is a remarkable feature of the current crisis that there has been so little whistleblowing, and I am not yet convinced that we have managed to sort the matter out.
Cathy Jamieson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his generosity. The question of whistleblowers was raised in a Labour amendment in Committee. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the Government must return to it in the future?
Mr Tyrie
I think that, in the first instance, it is the job of regulators to advise us—we shall see whether they do—and that it is the job of Parliament to keep an eye on the position. The Treasury Committee will need to be vigilant.
We failed to secure the abolition of the strategic objective of the FCA, although we see no logical reason why it should remain. It seems to serve as a licence to allow the FCA to do whatever it wants, and to override its own operational objectives. We also failed to secure a statutory duty for the Governor to raise the issue of excessive lobbying by banks. It is regrettable that there is to be no statutory duty to require the production of a second set of accounts designed to identify systemic risks in the balance sheets of banks, and we will ask regulators to return to that issue.
Nevertheless, if everything is taken into account, it is clear that the commissioners in the House of Lords won the argument, and secured the lion’s share of the measures proposed by the commission. Although the group has been depleted by the loss of Baroness Kramer to the Government, the remaining four have worked assiduously and very persuasively to improve the Bill, and, on behalf of the commissioners in the House of Commons, I thank them heartily. Let me also record my appreciation of the constructive way in which Treasury Ministers have engaged with me, and with other commissioners, on these subjects in recent weeks. They have been extremely helpful, as have their officials, and that has enabled us to make rapid progress. What is more, and equally important, the Government have made clear their support for a number of measures—some of which I have mentioned—that it will be the duty of regulators to implement. As I have said, the work of the regulators, and the supervision of it, will be at least as important as the statute itself
That brings me to the statute itself, and to the amendments that are before us. The first major change that is proposed is the introduction of a senior managers regime. One of the commission’s central objectives was to make a reality of individual responsibility, particularly at senior levels. I lost count of the number of witnesses from failed institutions who were not prepared to take personal responsibility for what was going on in their firms. In principle this should have been the task of the approved persons regime, but it was a disaster. It failed both at ensuring that competent people were appointed and at checking up on their subsequent performance.
The commission concluded that the APR was a complex and confused mess that did not perform any of its supposed roles adequately. It had become little more than a bureaucratic, box-ticking exercise. Its unsuitability has been illustrated by the fact that it seemed to pass the recently departed chairman of the Co-op bank as fit and proper to run a bank. Another indication of its irrelevance was the fact that most of those responsible for steering our major banks on to the rocks over the past five years were not even reassessed for their suitability after those banks had failed. The APR gave us the worst of all worlds: the appearance of regulatory oversight and the reality of none.
Cathy Jamieson
The specific examples that I cited had been reported to me, but I understand that in many instances high charges are applied even if people slip into an unauthorised overdraft for a very short period.
Let me ask the Minister another question. In a letter to the Minister, Martin Wheatley said:
“In designing the cap we will, as far as possible, seek to minimise potential avoidance measures. It is possible for firms located in other EEA Member States to provide a payday lending service through the internet to UK consumers within the Electronic Commerce Directive. This is not something that the FCA can mitigate.”
What assessment has the Minister made of the extent of that problem, and what can be done to reduce that? As we take things forward, it will be important that we do not simply move people from one payday lending system on to something else that could be equally difficult.
I want to say a few words about the relationship between the banks and the payday lending sector, and to focus on the question of the banks lending to the payday lenders. During the consideration of the Bill in the other place, Lord Mitchell raised this issue, and his understanding was that Barclays lent Wonga over £250 million. When he investigated that further, he discovered that the sum was apparently much higher. He raised concerns about the mission and the guiding principles of the bank and asked whether lending money to the payday lenders so they can then lend it at higher rates to people who need loans is the right thing for the banks to be doing. That raises the question of what the banks’ responsibilities are to those on lower incomes, and also the issue of the banks’ relationships with the credit unions, for example.
I feel that we must press the amendments we have tabled to a Division. I hear what the Minister has said and I have heard the comments and concerns raised by the FCA about the timetable, but I think it is reasonable to press for this to be done as quickly as possible. The Minister has said that January 2015 is the backstop date—the latest point when it could happen. I think it is reasonable for us to bring that forward and to press the amendments on data sharing to a Division.
Mr Tyrie
On payday loans, I only want to make two very quick points. First, we need to be very careful that EU regulation does not drive a coach and horses through anything we might try to do domestically. I also want to reinforce the point that it is extremely important not to displace what we may disapprove of in the formal sector into the informal sector of very nasty loan shark practices. This will require a great deal of supervision and care.