Credit Institutions and Investment Firms

Debate between Harriett Baldwin and William Cash

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I shall be brief in following my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) and in supporting the reasoned opinion. I also hope to strengthen and add to some of the arguments made by the Minister and the Opposition spokesman from the Dispatch Box in favour of subsidiarity in banking regulation.

If there is one over-arching lesson that we learned from the financial crisis of the past few years, it is the importance of having the primary banking regulator close to the financial market. I welcome the direction of travel on financial regulation in our national life, which will place much more importance on the role of the Bank of England, because the Bank follows what is happening in this country’s financial markets on a day-to-day basis.

It is instructive that the United States—a country that has had monetary union for the past century—is also caught up in the financial crisis. That subsidiarity in banking regulation continues to apply in the US in that each state is responsible for banking licences and supervision in its jurisdiction.

[Mr Cash]

I am fascinated by my hon. Friend’s line of argument, because she has raised the question of commercial states’ rights, which are embedded in the American constitution—they are inviolable. Countries in the EU have no such rights. When legislation at EU level goes through—this is why I so strongly attack and resist the idea of transfer of jurisdiction to that level—we are required under the 1972 Act to implement the law. We do not have commercial states’ rights.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Indeed, and to continue with my example, the US Federal Reserve is very much a system of individual reserve banks—the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco all play important and distinct roles, recognising that different banking markets have different characteristics, and recognising how vital subsidiarity is in banking regulation.

My heart sank when I asked at the Vote Office for papers relevant to today’s motion and was handed this 1,200-page document. We discussed earlier how the EU could save money on its budget, but the document is a prime example of where money could be saved. It is completely unnecessary.

I opened the document at random and found that one proposal is to start dictating quotas for women on the boards of financial institutions in the EU. Page 1,132, which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Stone will want to read in detail, is on quota laws for the number of women who sit on the boards of financial institutions in different countries. I noted that in the table of a survey of governance arrangements, Iceland and Norway are included, but the last time I checked, they were not even member states. I put myself firmly in the camp of people who think that the more diverse range of views one has on boards, the better, but I certainly do not think that that should be laid down in 1,200 pages of EU guidance.

[Mr Cash]

To give another example, article 218 refers—incomprehensibly—to the so-called financial collateral comprehensive method. To illustrate how far away we have moved from the notion of running a capitalist and financial system sensibly, we are now down to formulas. I shall try to quote it. The document states:

“Institutions shall calculate the volatility-adjusted value of the collateral (C_VA) they need to take into account as follows …C_VA = C (1 - H_C - H_fx)…where…C = the value of the collateral”.

That is absolute gobbledegook, but that is the manner in which our system is run. It is completely mad.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I can see that if I carry on giving examples, I will only encourage my hon. Friend to find more passages of gobbledegook to read into the record, but it is indeed the most appalling document.