Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment have they made of the overdraft fees and other charges levied on current account banking customers in the UK.
Answered by Lord Bates
The Government has not made an assessment of overdraft fees and other charges on current accounts. Decisions on overdraft fees and charges are a commercial matter for firms. However, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) requires firms to treat their customers fairly and has broad and robust powers to enforce breaches of its rules.
As part of its ongoing work on high-cost credit, the FCA is currently consulting on measures that aim to secure greater protection for consumers using overdrafts. The FCA is also considering current accounts and overdraft pricing as part of its wider Strategic Review of Retail Business Banking Models. The Government supports the FCA’s work in this area and will continue to work with it to ensure that all banking customers are treated fairly.
Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the rules surrounding high cost credit and the fairness of the present situation for customers.
Answered by Lord Bates
The Government has fundamentally reformed regulation of the consumer credit market, including high-cost credit, transferring regulatory responsibility from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on 1 April 2014. This more robust regulatory system is helping to deliver the Government’s vision for a well-functioning and sustainable consumer credit market which is able to meet the needs of all consumers.
The Government welcomed the FCA’s recent update on high-cost credit, including a proposal to cap the cost of rent-to-own. The Government will continue to work with the FCA to ensure that all high-cost credit customers are treated fairly.
Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what lessons, if any, they have learnt from the credit union movement in Northern Ireland.
Answered by Lord Bates
The government remains committed to supporting credit unions, which provide vital services to financially under-served communities and contribute to the diversity of the UK’s financial services sector.
Government engages closely with representatives of the credit union sector throughout the UK to understand how credit unions may best be supported. This includes speaking to Northern Ireland specific trade bodies and maintaining an ongoing relationship with the devolved Department for Economy in Northern Ireland to understand any issues specific to Northern Ireland’s credit union sector.
Government’s engagement with the credit union sector includes ongoing consideration of its legislative framework. For example, in 2014 Government conducted a Call for Evidence (‘British Credit Unions at 50’) on credit unions. Several respondents asked for changes to the legislation governing credit unions, and in its response, Government committed to actively consider legislative changes in the next Parliament. At Autumn Budget 2017, Government committed to raising the geographical common bond limit for credit unions from 2 to 3 million. This change came into effect in April 2018.
All changes to credit union legislation must be considered alongside the need to maintain an appropriate regulatory regime for credit unions. A looser legislative framework would likely require increased regulation which might be inappropriate for small, community based institutions.
Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans, if any, they have to review the legislation covering credit unions.
Answered by Lord Bates
The government remains committed to supporting credit unions, which provide vital services to financially under-served communities and contribute to the diversity of the UK’s financial services sector.
Government engages closely with representatives of the credit union sector throughout the UK to understand how credit unions may best be supported. This includes speaking to Northern Ireland specific trade bodies and maintaining an ongoing relationship with the devolved Department for Economy in Northern Ireland to understand any issues specific to Northern Ireland’s credit union sector.
Government’s engagement with the credit union sector includes ongoing consideration of its legislative framework. For example, in 2014 Government conducted a Call for Evidence (‘British Credit Unions at 50’) on credit unions. Several respondents asked for changes to the legislation governing credit unions, and in its response, Government committed to actively consider legislative changes in the next Parliament. At Autumn Budget 2017, Government committed to raising the geographical common bond limit for credit unions from 2 to 3 million. This change came into effect in April 2018.
All changes to credit union legislation must be considered alongside the need to maintain an appropriate regulatory regime for credit unions. A looser legislative framework would likely require increased regulation which might be inappropriate for small, community based institutions.
Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking to combat tax refund scams.
Answered by Lord Bates
The most common form of tax refund scam involves criminals abusing HMRC’s brand by trying to make it look like an email or text has come from HMRC. HMRC has dedicated Customer Protection teams within their Cyber Security Command Centres to combat Phishing (email) and SMiShing (texting) attacks, including those offering spurious tax refunds. They use a range of proactive and reactive techniques to identify and challenge online scams in order to reduce harm to the public.
In the last year, the teams above have identified over 14,000 malicious HMRC-related websites and requested their removal. HMRC also challenge the ownership of misleading sites through formal internet dispute resolution governance. That work has resulted in over 2 million visits to potentially misleading sites being redirected to gov.uk education pages.
HMRC works closely with other government departments and with industry to continue to develop controls to combat tax refund scams.
Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action have they taken to support credit unions in the last two years.
Answered by Lord Bates
The government is committed to supporting credit unions, which provide vital services to financially under-served communities and contribute to the diversity of the UK’s financial services sector. Over the last two financial years, the government has done this by:
Announcing at Autumn Budget 2017, that where a credit union’s membership conditions are based on locality, a credit union will be able to increase the number of potential members it can have to from 2 to 3 million. The legislation to make this change was laid in November 2017 and comes into force in April 2018.
Announcing at Autumn Statement 2016 that, from 2018, an existing scheme which incentivises credit union membership in communities at risk of being targeted by loan sharks, will be expanded. This uses funds recovered under the Proceeds of Crime Act from convicted loan sharks.
Contributing £600,000 to an initiative developed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Young Enterprise, to start savings clubs in primary schools and educate young children in the benefits of saving. Lifesavers works with local credit unions to help run savings clubs with schoolchildren, and is currently being piloted in six primary schools.
Providing funding for the Credit Union Expansion Project, delivered by the Association of British Credit Unions Ltd, with an aim to modernise and grow the sector. Over the past year, credit unions with a total membership of 16,500 have begun using an online banking platform provided by this project.
Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the performance of sterling in the last 12 months, in comparison to the dollar, the euro and the yen.
Answered by Lord Bates
The UK has an inflation target, not an exchange rate target, and the government does not express a view on the level of the exchange rate. The value of sterling adjusts flexibly in response to economic conditions and market forces.
Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many referrals of (1) individuals, and (2) businesses, for suspected tax offences HMRC has received from local authorities in each year since 1997 up to the last year for which figures are available.
Answered by Lord Bates
The table below shows referrals of (1) individuals, and (2) businesses, for suspected tax offences HMRC has received from local authorities, in each year since 2016 up to the last year for which figures are available. Prior to 2016, HMRC did not record data in a way that captured the originator of referrals.
| 2016 | 2017* | TOTAL |
INDIVIDUALS | 57 | 10 | 67 |
BUSINESSES | 48 | 13 | 61 |
*As of 22 November.
Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of proposed changes to the ATM network, and of the potential for such changes to limit access to free ATMs in some poorer communities.
Answered by Lord Bates
The Government recognises that widespread free access to cash remains extremely important to the day-to-day lives of many consumers and businesses in the UK, and will continue to work with industry to ensure continued free access to cash.
LINK, the scheme that runs the ATM network in the UK, has assured the Government that it is committed to maintaining an extensive network of free-to-use cash machines regardless of any changes currently under consideration within the scheme, and to ensuring that the present geographical spread of ATMs is maintained.
They have also assured Government that the industry is committed to maintaining widespread free access to cash, and that any reduction in the number of ATMs is likely to be in areas where there are currently multiple ATMs. They are committed to maintaining their Financial Inclusion Programme to ensure the provision of ATMs in areas of deprivation, where demand would not otherwise make one viable.
In 2015 the Government set up the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) with the statutory objective to ensure that the UK’s payment systems work in the interests of their users. The PSR is monitoring developments within ATM provision, and is conducting ongoing internal work on the impact that changes to interchange fees may have. Government is confident that the PSR will use its powers to act should any of the firms it regulates behave in a way that conflicts with its statutory objectives.
Asked by: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bates on 28 July (HL997), whether they received a request for ministers to meet the European Parliament's Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion; and if so, what was their response.
Answered by Lord Bates
The European Parliament’s Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion requested a meeting with ministers during the Committee’s two-day visit to London during February 2017. Ministers were unavailable on the days requested and the Committee met with senior officials from the UK’s cross-agency Panama Papers Taskforce.