Financial Services and Markets Bill [HL]

Lord Mann Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

If we had green technology in households and businesses everywhere, then we would be less reliant on Russia, China and Iran. So, why is there no financial product that the householder can get hold of to put, say, solar panels on their roof, so they and the country benefit? Why is there not a product for schools to do the same thing or a product for an NHS trust to do the same thing? If the technology works and is sufficiently profitable, then a good financial product would make common sense. But I see none for schools or for NHS trusts, and those for householders and small businesses in particular are rather limited. I would be interested in the Minister’s observations, because it seems to me that is relevant to the Bill far more than it is relevant to the Energy Secretary.

Secondly, the Minister was very bullish about how mutuals and co-operatives are going to double. We are two years into five years of a Labour Government. I would be interested to know whether we are 40% towards that doubling now, and if not, which are the sectors that are going to lead the way in the next three years, and how. I would also be interested, perhaps in writing, to understand that, in the case of one small sector, county cricket clubs, whether it is the Government’s expectation that in the next three years, they will be as mutualised as they are now, or significantly less so.

My third and most substantial point is on financial mis-selling. I have previously raised the V11 group of working-class footballers who were done out of their investments by fraud. Exactly what happened to them is very similar to what happened to the coal miners—a separate case; it was not financial fraud but lawyers who were ripping them off and taking their money. There, the ombudsman did a special report in 2008. I managed to get 43 firms of solicitors disciplined and fined; I got 12 removed from practice.

Let us take the financial sector and what has happened to those former footballers, as well as to many other groups in society who have been mis-sold products. I do not see the same system. As vice-chair of the Treasury Select Committee in another House, I had to deal with the Financial Ombudsman Service for four years, and I found it lacking in purpose and losing skills and experience all the time. I did not see the level of leadership needed to take hold of things. How is that going to change—I hope it will—with a shift of power to the Financial Conduct Authority?

Looking at the V11 case as an example, the fraud was palmed off to the Serious Fraud Office and the City of London Police. Why? Why did it go to one specific police force? I had dealings with the SFO. When it came to the coal miners and the legal scandals, which were mega, I got money—millions of pounds—back for more than 2,000 of my then constituents. Why is that not being handled more effectively at the beginning? In this case, we are talking about financial mis-selling, which is a conduct issue, as well as fraud, which is a policing issue—and there is a mishmash in the middle. I want to be convinced that the Financial Conduct Authority will cut through that.

If working-class sports stars and musicians come into money and find others taking their money away from them—by mis-selling or, worse, by fraud and mis-selling—why would others invest in those products in the first place? In the case of the footballers and Kingsbridge Asset Management, that idea was brought forward by the Government and the then Chancellor Gordon Brown as a way to develop the UK film industry and as the right thing to do. If working-class people do the right thing and get some money and invest it, who is going to protect that? People are not surrounded by good accountants, if any, or by good lawyers, if any, when they first come into money.

If we look at the financial fraud cases, we see case after case where people are getting done over by people who appear to be cleverer than them, giving them advice and mis-selling—and the system is not helping them out. That is fundamental. That is the bit that I want to see more of in the Bill. If we are appealing to the country by saying, “Do the right thing and invest in the future”—whatever kind of investment—there have to be guarantees. The system has to be robust enough so that, when there is wrongdoing, somebody is going to sort it out. The mishmash of the SFO and the City of London Police is not a system; it is just a hope—and it has proven to be a failed hope.

I ask the Minister, if the FCA is taking that responsibility, what precisely will the Government say to the FCA on the systems, the skills and the reporting back, including to Parliament, that it is going to give, to show that it is up to the mark in being able to handle the mis-selling and the fraudsters? Has it got the powers it needs to prosecute? That seems to me to be fundamental. The separation of prosecution and those looking at financial mis-selling is one of the lessons from the V11 group, the loan charges and the other, multiple scandals that we have seen in the past two decades. People need to be confident in the system around financial services, and we need to make sure they are. I look forward to hearing from the Minister precisely what he is going to say to the FCA, should this Bill be passed and the FCA be given more power.