Financial Services and Markets Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Peter Grant and Angela Eagle

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I beg to move amendment 35, in clause 8, page 9, line 25, at end insert—

“(ba) in cases where the regulations make provision for liability, make provision for nominated representatives of organisations against whom liability has been found to be held personally liable for actions undertaken in relation to carrying out a designated activity,”.

This amendment would allow for nominated representatives to be held personally liable for the carrying out of a designated activity when an organisation has been found liable.

This is another amendment that attempts to improve the protection of consumers, small investors and others who in the past have been far too easy prey for unscrupulous company directors and other people in charge of companies. In a number of the recent financial services scams, we have seen that even once the investigatory regulatory process has been completed, which in itself can take five, even 10 years, any attempt to recover money from where it should be recovered from—the pockets of criminals—is frustrated by the fact that the companies at the centre of the scam have at best no money left in their books. Most of the time, they have been placed into liquidation long ago.

Part of that liquidation process is always moving the money into other companies, very often hidden in offshore anonymous companies owned by the exact same person. Effectively, the person who works the scam takes steps to get their money well out of the reach of the UK regulators and enforcers long before the liability of the company is established. Amendment 35 seeks not to require but to allow the designated activity regulations in specific circumstances to make regulations that say, “There will be occasions when individuals who have carried out the misconduct will be held personally liable to people who have suffered.” That means that those who have been scammed in a way that is not covered by the financial services compensation scheme at least have a chance of getting their money back. Possibly more importantly, the amendment would be a further deterrent to those who would carry out such scams, because it will at least partially close down the option of their hiding their ill-gotten gains in a different company, where they are no longer within reach of the regulator.

I appreciate that anything that starts to blur the distinction between a shareholder, a director and the legal personality that is a limited company should be used with caution. I fully understand why, in UK law, a company is its own person with its own legal identity, but there are times when we cannot allow the director of a company to hide behind that—times when natural justice says that if we know who is responsible for people losing their money, and know that they have buckets full of money sitting in a company somewhere, it is perfectly reasonable to say to them, “We will have that money to compensate the people you scammed.”

The victims of Blackmore Bond will never see their money again. I understand that one of its directors is now bankrupt, but the other definitely is not. Most of the victims of Safe Hands Plans will probably not see their money again. Remember, its director bought the company at a time when he knew that it would have to wind up in a year or two; we have to ask why he was so keen to buy it. He is not a poor person; he is extremely wealthy. He just managed to move his money out of that company and into others.

Clearly, the amendment could not be retrospective, but if it was agreed to, it would mean that if any person tried the same dodge in future, their victims could, in court, try to get their money back from the person who stole from them, rather than from the company, which will often no longer exist.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I do not want to row in behind the hon. Member and support absolutely everything that he says on his amendment, but I know what he is trying to do: to put something in statute that would solve the problem of fraud, which is more and more prevalent in our financial system, especially in and around the perimeter that we have been talking about. There can be questions about whether a person is inside or outside the perimeter, or whether a bit of their company is inside and a bit outside. That kind of fraudulent hiding behind being regulated when the things being sold are outwith the perimeter does fool a lot of people, and a lot of money is scammed out of our constituents’ bank accounts in that way. Does the Minister have any observations on how we could—

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

That is true. Blockchain has certainly been around for quite a while. Its use has implications for transparency and for the levels of employment that there might be in the old, more bureaucratic banks.

What would be the use of artificial intelligence in trying to decide how automated these things could become? Would there be worries about over-automation? How would that be looked at in terms of regulation? How open are we going to be about the way in which AI is applied and how it might evolve in ways that might embed discrimination such that we get a system where certain people may be discriminated against and excluded? There are a range of issues that need to be tested in these kinds of environments. It is hard to do that under a negative resolution procedure. I take the Minister’s point, however, about affirmative resolutions. If one of these things worked during the trial period, was issued and became permanent, it is important, as the Minister has said, that any changes are subject to affirmative regulation.

There are a whole load of black boxes in the Bill that we might need to debate further. Could the Minister give us more colour on whether there will be parallel sandboxes, on transparency on what will be used and how it will be compiled, and on how large the sandboxes will be in terms of money on the exchanges or turnover, or however he wants to put it. Then we could consider whether risk is being mitigated and how we can develop a system using trundling and analogue legislation, if I may put it that way, in an environment where innovation is digital and rapid.

I understand what the Minister is trying to do, but this Parliament must still be aware that we need to be on top of the detail of this Bill, rather than just passing shells of enabling legislation that do not give us enough of a handle on what is intended.

[Peter Grant]

Thank you, Dame Maria, for clarifying earlier that we are talking about sandboxes, not sandwich boxes. Some Members seem to have been a bit confused about that. I am intrigued by the use of the term “sandbox”. To me, a sandbox can be a road safety feature: it is literally a gravel or sand pit on a bad bend in the road to allow someone who loses control to get off the road safely. Alternatively, a sandbox is something that any cat owner will be familiar with. I am genuinely intrigued as to which of those metaphors somebody thought was appropriate for what we are discussing.

The principle behind these measures is absolutely sound. By this time next year, new practices in financial services will have evolved that none of us can begin to imagine just now. That is how things are moving. I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire that the technology itself has not significantly changed—it is certainly not new—but the way in which people will use the technology is. The kinds of products that people will start to devise may well mean that existing regulatory practices need to be changed very quickly. The idea of being allowed to pilot something that is genuinely new in a safe space before letting it loose on the wider world is absolutely correct in my view. However, the devil, of course, is in the detail.

I am a bit concerned that the first in this group of clauses says that the purpose of the sandbox will be to test

“for a limited period, the efficiency or effectiveness of the carrying on of FMI activities”.

It does not say that one of the purposes is to test the effectiveness of any regulation that may go with it, which concerns me. Obviously, if someone knows that the activity they are carrying out in a sandbox will be looked at very carefully, they are going to behave themselves. How can we be sure that as well as being effective, it will work for the purposes of the providers? How do we know that the regulation that goes with it will also be effective? Again, that has to be effective as soon as the thing goes live. We cannot wait and regulate it effectively a few weeks later, because it will be far too late by then.

Financial Services and Markets Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Peter Grant and Angela Eagle

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Grant]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Dame Maria.

As Members know, the SNP group came close to voting against the Bill on Second Reading. In fact, we tabled a reasoned amendment, primarily because of our concern about how the clause intends to take matters forward, but it was not selected by Mr Speaker. A sad fact for many of us is that the United Kingdom is no longer part of the European Union and that, therefore, all European Union legislation needs to be reconsidered. My problem is that it has already been decided in the Bill that, on financial services, all European Union legislation needs to be thrown out.

We hope that someone in the Treasury will at the same time, or very quickly afterwards, replace that legislation with something at least as good, if not better. I mean no disrespect to anyone here, to any Member of Parliament, the Minister or anyone working in the Treasury, however, when I say that I can have no confidence that that process, on that scale and at that speed, will work—we need only look at the number of amendments that the Government have had to table to the Bill because of mistakes in it, as published. In Delegated Legislation Committees on which I have sat, there have been instances where we have had to correct the correction to the correction of an initial piece of secondary legislation arising from Brexit.

It is simply not realistic to believe that all the revocations and repeals proposed under the clause can be replaced with equally good regulation without mistakes being made. When mistakes are made in the regulation of financial services, people get scammed, companies that should survive go under and the United Kingdom’s reputation as a dodgy place to do financial services becomes even worse. For all that I am not a big fan of the United Kingdom, I do not want to see that happen. I am not a big fan of the United Kingdom Parliament either, but I do not want to see its right to scrutinise in detail any suggested changes to legislation undermined, simply because it suits the Government of the day.

While it may be that the right thing to do with all 200-plus pieces of legislation listed in schedule 1 is to revoke and repeal every single word, Parliament should be given a choice, at reasonable speed, to decide whether that is correct. Ideally, at the same time as Parliament is asked to revoke the legislation, we should be given the chance to consider what will be put in its place.

My view on clause 1 altered slightly when we heard from the witnesses last week, especially those from the financial institutions. Some of them said that they genuinely felt that some of the existing EU legislation needs to go or to be changed significantly. I did not hear anybody asking for a wholesale revision of all 200-plus pieces of legislation. The motivation appears to be to take the European Union sticker off the number plate and put a Union Jack on it instead. If that is the only difference that is being made, what the Government suggest here is far too risky and undermines the right of Members of Parliament, including those who are not on the Committee, and their responsibility to scrutinise legislation that is crucial not only to the wellbeing of the economy on a big scale, but to the wellbeing of the economies of hundreds of thousands of our constituents. For many of them, this legislation has come too late, because they have been ruined by financial services scams that could perhaps have been prevented if this legislation had been introduced sooner.

It is my intention to press the amendment to a Division, Madam Deputy Speaker—I mean, Dame Maria. I do not know whether I should apologise for promoting you. Accepting the amendment would not significantly delay any legislative changes that the Government intend to introduce, but it would ensure that they are scrutinised properly to increase the chance that when mistakes are made in the replacement legislation, as they will be, they are picked up and dealt with before it is too late.

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Good morning, Dame Maria. It is a great honour to be on a Bill that you are chairing—I think it is our first time together in this iteration.

The Opposition do not have a problem with the principle of repealing some of the EU legislation, but I rise to invite the Minister to give us more detail on precisely how he envisages the wide-ranging power in clause 1 will be exercised in practice. I speak as a former member of the European Statutory Instruments Committee, which did a great deal of work in sifting all of the EU legislation to onshore it ahead of Brexit, including all the legislation covered by the Bill. We sat regularly and looked at thousands upon thousands of pieces of EU legislation, which we brought onshore ahead of Brexit. A great deal of work was done to achieve that, but a great many mistakes were made during the process in the drafting, the interpretation and the way in which powers were onshored in areas where we have not legislated directly for 47 years. This is a great accumulation of technical, but also extremely important, legislation that impacts on our constituents’ experience of everyday life as consumers and on how they use financial services and insurance, banking and savings products. If we get it wrong, there can be a great deal of detriment to our constituents.

Will the Minister give the Committee an idea of how the wide-ranging power to amend a large amount of legislation that has been on the statute book for many years will be done in a way that reassures all our constituents that we have the right balance between consumer protection and consumer rights on the one hand and our financial services industry and the way that it operates on the other? How will Parliament get to look at this? It is possible to argue that clause 1 would allow Parliament to be run over roughshod, without providing proper scrutiny, so will the Minister indicate how it will work in practice? How does he propose the powers will be exercised? What can Parliament do if we perceive that an issue that has been overlooked in all the technocracy impacts on our constituents? We need to ensure we have proper accountability.

I would be less worried if, as the hon. Member for Glenrothes said, we are just taking off an EU flag and sticking on a Union Jack, but I assume the Minister is taking these powers because he wants to use them. Will he set out in his comments on clause 1 precisely how he expects that to happen?

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dame Maria. We often cross paths in these Committees and it is great to see you once again in the Chair.

I will speak briefly about amendment 44, following the comments of the hon. Members for Wallasey and for Glenrothes. The Government need to be nimble in how they lay regulations, particularly in this transitional period. Clause 1 provides the ability to be agile, particularly as we redevelop our financial services framework following our departure from the European Union. The Government clearly need the ability to do that. We are dealing with a vast array of regulation, primary legislation and laws that will require a significant amount of time to be developed, but at speed. Clause 1 enables the Minister to do that, and I trust my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs to develop the legislative framework in the right way.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

Clearly, Pepper v. Hart applies when a reassurance is given by a Minister. That is partly why we ask questions in these proceedings. We wish to have on record reassurances about the meaning of the statute in front of us, how the Government interpret it, and what the Government’s intent was. If there is any subsequent doubt about that, the record can be looked at under the provisions of Pepper v. Hart.

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful for that intervention. I do not disagree with a word of it. My point is simply that whatever the conventions, traditions and proceedings of this House might tell us, in practice the doctrine of ministerial responsibility does not apply in the way that I just about remember learning about 50 years ago as a schoolchild, in what was then called modern studies. There are numerous examples of Ministers behaving in a way that would require them to go, if they believed in the conventions of the House. I am not suggesting for a second—

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[Peter Grant]

It is interesting that we have three clauses here, each of which give the Treasury the power to amend legislation in very, very closely defined and restricted ways, and every one of them needs regulations to be approved by Parliament. Most of them require approval by the affirmative procedure. However, two minutes ago we were told we could wipe out 200 different items of legislation in their entirety without Parliament needing to have any oversight of the process. It does seem a strange contradiction.

The way the clauses are worded and the restrictions that are placed on them mean that this is one of the very few occasions where I would be comfortable in allowing regulations to be used to amend primary legislation. However, I have to say that for some of the restrictions, one wonders why they are there. Subsection (6) to clause 3 requires the Treasury to consult the regulator, and subsection (7) basically says, “But the Treasury only needs to consult the regulators if the Treasury thinks it is a good idea”. Why on earth does that need to be put into an Act of Parliament?

If clause 1 had been worded in a similar way to these clauses, there would have been no need for my amendment. There would have been no question at all from my point of view about that clause being accepted. I hope the Minister can explain why it is that these very limited and restricted powers to amend legislation are subject in most cases to the affirmative procedure, whereby Parliament has to approve them, when all the legislation that was put up for repeal and revocation in clause 1 needs no further detailed scrutiny from Parliament.

As far as the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, I think those comments perhaps related to an amendment that the Government have flagged that they intend to introduce that may well give the Government far too much power to direct the supposedly independent regulators. If and when that amendment comes forward, we will certainly have concerns about it. I do not think those comments were related to the clauses in the Bill as it stands. On that basis, I will not oppose the clauses today.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I want to register some concern and get the Minister’s reassurances on the record about what are very broad-ranging powers for the Treasury, which are then subject to constraints. Was it necessary to have such broad-ranging powers? It is not a good way of approaching things unless there are no other options. Is the Minister worried that, over time, those constraints might loosen and the broad powers will remain? The dynamic of this kind of structure is what worries me, rather than the balance that he has explained the Government have currently set.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

Obviously, this is an extremely complex area of technical regulation. It requires the regulators, alongside the Basel Committee and the international authorities regulating the flow of this kind of stuff, to operate effectively. If securitisation goes wrong or if markets begin to be opaque, with transparency going down, there can serious consequences for the countries in which such firms are based. That might also engage systemic threats to the banking structures of those countries. We have been through that before, and we know what happened when securitisation went wrong in the global financial crisis and what damage that caused to the global infrastructure.

Clearly, those tasked with ensuring that that does not happen again—those in the Bank of England, the prudential regulators and the FCA who have a handle on this, as well as the international regulators trying to set standards—have to be very aware of how such regulation might change and effect firms in the markets. However, there will always be a push in these markets to move the boundaries towards something less opaque and more profitable for those doing business, hoping that the risks can be left somewhere else. When risks crystallise, however, they are left on the balance sheets of nations that have to cope with cleaning up the mess. So, while I approve of modernising such regimes, little alarm bells go off in my mind when I think about attracting more such business. That kind of business is attractive if it is safe; it is not attractive if it is unsafe.

The Minister ploughed through his speech about all the technicalities of the shift away from EU-regulated systems and about how onshoring back to the UK will be done. Given how large our banking, financial services and insurance sector is, we are clearly at systemic risk if we get this wrong. We have to get the balance right between ensuring that any new regimes are transparent and safe enough to be hosted in our country. The Minister took us through some of the technical changes, but will he reassure us about the transparency and safety issues in the new regime that I have hinted at?

[Peter Grant]

If the sun moves much further, I will have to sit on the other side of the room to keep it out of my eyes, so my apologies for having to move seat during the debate, Dame Maria.

I thank the Minister for doing what I hoped he would have done in the debate on the revocations in clause 1: outlining in terms understandable to a lay person why some specific items of EU legislation are no longer appropriate for the United Kingdom—in fact, it is questionable whether they are appropriate elsewhere. I would have wanted to see that before the changes proposed in other parts of the Bill. On the basis of the Minister’s comments, and the fact that none of the regulators we heard from raised concerns, I am willing to accept that the changes suggested in the clause and the details in schedule 2 are appropriate.

I want to draw attention to a comment the Minister made earlier and to give him the chance to correct it. He suggested that this is EU legislation that Parliament never had the chance to scrutinise, but that is not the case. I spent several years, as other hon. Members did, on the European Scrutiny Committee. Every single piece of legislation the European Union intended to implement came before that Committee, which had the authority to call in Ministers and to put a stop on them approving things at EU Council meetings if the Committee was unsatisfied as to the impact. The House of Commons—the whole of Parliament—had the right to take action to prevent any of those directives from coming into force. The fact that Parliament seldom did that is a failing of this and previous Parliaments. The fact that Ministers had so much free rein to do what they liked, and could ignore Parliament if they wanted to, is not the fault of the European Union; it is because of the relationship between Parliament and Government. This Parliament is unfit for purpose, and Ministers from other members of the European Union would not have been allowed to agree to those directives without a vote in their respective Parliaments. I hope the Minister will be willing to correct the record. We can agree or disagree about legislation that the European Union put in place, but to suggest that this Parliament was somehow unable to have any impact on that legislation is simply not accurate.