argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Other
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): I hear what the noble Lord and the Committee have said. That is what a Committee stage is for: it is for the Government to listen to what noble Lords have to say. I am grateful for what they have said, and I undertake to take it back, reflect on it and discuss it with colleagues ahead of Report. In the meantime, if the noble Baroness is happy to withdraw her amendment, I shall be grateful.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Other
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): I hear what the noble Lord is saying. Without wanting to rehearse Second Reading again or to undermine any of the progress that I feel we have already made on this in Committee, I will conclude by saying that from my perspective, the noble Baroness has made a proposal to deal with the length of time and the reporting—to address the noble and learned Lord’s point—about where there are changes, what changes have been made and why, and whether that report could be received in advance of the statutory instrument being laid and then debated in the House. In the spirit of recognising the points referred to, I have said that I am prepared to look at that. Three months may be too long but I am prepared to have a discussion ahead of Report on whether another time period may be more acceptable. With that, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Howard Emerson Flight (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the hope is that if everything were sensible, the amendment would be appropriate and powerful. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, pointed out, it is possible that the EU may go down paths of regulation that are not very sensible. In that situation, given that the market for the UK’s financial services industry is not just Europe, it may not be practical for the UK to use and follow equivalence. Indeed, there may need to be changes to the benefit of the industry other than vis-à-vis a Europe that has gone off the rails with its regulations.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I shall begin by looking at what I think is an area of common ground: we all recognise the importance of the financial services industry to the UK. Perhaps I may pick up on a point made by my noble friend Lord Flight, that one of the main purposes of this Bill is to ensure that the UK remains an attractive and competitive place to do business, retaining our place as a world leader in financial services. To do this in a no-deal context, it is essential that the UK retains sovereignty over our rules. From the perspective of financial stability and protecting the UK taxpayer, it is essential that the Government, the Bank of England and the FCA have the tools available to ensure that the UK markets are appropriately and effectively regulated It would be wrong to set a condition over the UK’s regulatory framework that means decisions which are made about the UK’s future regime are determined through the lens of maintaining equivalence to the EU, irrespective of the quality of those rules and how future legislation and the market itself may evolve.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): To go back to first principles, I am saying that the power in this Bill is not in effect to make policy—rather, it is the ability to produce secondary legislation that has a policy content to it and which would then be subject to scrutiny in this House. That power is being put in place for an extraordinary set of circumstances—I think we all agree that these are extraordinary circumstances and in fact I should underscore that we hope that these powers will not be required to be acted upon, because there will be a deal and we will continue to have access to the market in financial services across the EU. That is our aim, but we are preparing for all eventualities The noble Baroness will be aware that equivalence determinations are autonomous decisions with the EU and, in turn, the UK retaining autonomy for determining if a foreign jurisdiction has equivalent standards and supervision. The EU takes a varied approach to assessments of equivalence, tailoring its approach to individual regimes with regard to how the assessment is conducted. The Commission itself has stated: "It is the equivalence of regulatory and supervisory results that is being assessed, not a word-for-word sameness of legal texts" Indeed, for a recent example, one need only to look at the EU’s statements on equivalence in a no-deal scenario. Within these, the EU has been clear that equivalence decisions of the UK will be made where justified in the interest of the Union and its member states, with time limits and conditions to their decisions where appropriate. As such, it is very difficult to judge what the EU will take into account in its future assessments and how its autonomous third country regime will evolve. Such an approach, plus the breadth and variety of considerations that form part of equivalence determinations, from the rules themselves to supervisory approaches, means that it would be very difficult to determine what effect, if any, a change or adjustment that the UK makes to our laws might have on a future equivalence determination in a given area, given that these are autonomous decisions taken by the EU. It is therefore difficult to see how the test set out in this amendment could be met Let me reiterate the importance of, in the case of a no-deal situation, retaining the ability to adjust our legislation so that it best serves the aims and objectives of the UK once we have left the EU, as my noble friend Lord Flight has identified. It is crucial to ensure that we can bring into force pieces of legislation in a way that works best for the interests of UK markets. The Government are also committed to doing this as transparently as possible, which is why we have set out the strict reporting requirements to which I know we will return on Report. In the light of that, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Robin Granville Hodgson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment. My noble friend has raised an important point about Brexit itself and its implications for the regulatory regime. I do not propose to follow up on his technical discussion, but there is a wider point to be made. Here, I will draw on the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who said that, in the two-year period during which the Bill provides powers, things will happen. We can set out our regulatory stall, but our strategy for regulation needs to become clearer during the two years in which the Act will be in effect It is important that the Government do some serious thinking about how this country will present itself to the world via its financial services as part and parcel of the new regime. Noble Lords will know that, for a number of years, I was a director of one of the self-regulatory organisations which governed the City before the passage of the Financial Services and Markets Act. A wise old bird once told us that we should think about it like a high jump. If you set the bar too low, everybody can clear it and you will attract to your market all sorts of undesirable characters and firms, and there will inevitably be failures and problems, which will damage your overall reputation and therefore you will lose your world standing. By contrast, if you set the bar so high that nobody can get over it without enormous cost, bureaucracy, time and difficulty, you may have a market relatively free of failure but it will have very many fewer participants. I encourage the Government to think about how we set that high-jump bar for regulations, given the comments my noble friend made in his opening remarks The only other point I want to make is this: regulation tends to be on an upward lockstep. For the most part, regulators do not have a reverse gear. Few regulators come along and say that, given that the world has changed, they no longer need the powers they have because they can do a perfectly satisfactory job without them. Rather, they are left with those powers, which then have to be enforced and have a cost. The commercial vessel then gets more and more barnacles and slows through the water, and it is never able to go in for a hull clean My remarks are not an argument against regulation per se. They urge the Government to have regular reviews of regulation to ensure that it is properly focused and achieves a worthwhile result.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Howard Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): With great respect, I must say that that is not the situation in respect of the AIM market. This is where market-makers who are bound to make a market respond to requests for specified sums or amounts of shares with quoted prices. I think that the noble Baroness is talking about a different type of short selling.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Howard Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my noble friends Lord Flight and Lord Hodgson for supporting this amendment. They have become the wise old birds. I was very pleased to have two people supporting this amendment who have started financial services businesses in London and grown them to be global financial services businesses. It goes to show the power and expertise that resides in this House I thank the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for his comments. I am sure he was not seeking to stereotype Tories. Curiously enough, although many people would regard captains of industry as natural Tories, one finds that the large multinationals are the companies that want more, not less, regulation because it consolidates their position. From the perspective of small businesses, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, we look for more appropriate regulation, rather than less regulation I am very grateful to him and to my noble friend Lord Bates for picking up my complimentary remarks about the EU Commission. I a bit worried that I will be drummed out of the ERG after this. Nevertheless, it is true that the Commission has listened. My worry is that it has listened to us because we have had a voice. However, if we leave under a hard Brexit, we will not have a voice through bodies such as the QCA and therefore, because it does not really understand AIM and other aspects of the financial services industry in London, it will produce inappropriate regulation. We will need a very effective and immediate reaction to that, which I believe the Treasury is capable of doing I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, that the naked short selling by market-makers in the AIM market is essential to liquidity. It is not to be confused with naked short selling by hedge funds, which is a very risky and different proposition. It just goes to show that it is a complicated area. I will be honest: I am not wholly sure that I understand it or how it works but I understand that much—that it is essential to liquidity The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, is right. Essentially this is about unintended consequences; none the less, it is always nice to get into legislation protection for the financial services sector and small businesses With the very welcome reassurances from my noble friend Lord Bates, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, first, I am sure that I speak for the whole Committee in thanking the noble Lord for his succinctness in presenting his amendment. I recognise the old adage that everything needs to be said but not everyone needs to say it. That is a good principle. In following him in that spirit, I will put on the record a few comments that I believe will be helpful for our wider debates We appreciate the concerns across the Committee regarding the Henry VIII powers and, where they are proposed, it is clear that their necessity must be well evidenced. In the case of the financial services legislation, to which the power in this Bill will apply, I hope that noble Lords will accept the need for such a power An inability to amend existing primary legislation such as the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 will render it impossible to implement this necessary body of legislation. Further, as noble Lords will be aware, the exercise of many functions under financial services legislation is carried out by the independent regulators—the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England. The capacity and expertise of the financial regulators will be absolutely crucial to the effective implementation of these pieces of legislation and, consequently, to the resilience and prosperity of the financial services sector here in the UK The amendment would remove the ability to delegate to the regulators because, as a general rule, a power to make secondary legislation does not include a power to sub-delegate. An inability to effectively delegate powers to the regulators in implementing the legislation contained in this Bill would severely undermine the value of transposing the original legislation into UK law. In many cases, it would effectively render legislation unenforceable, and the Bill would simply not be able to achieve its central goal of ensuring that the UK continues to be an attractive and competitive place to do business in the immediate two-year period post exit, in the unwelcome and unlikely event of a no-deal scenario. Given this context and the context of the previous debate, I invite the noble Lord to consider withdrawing his amendment.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Other
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree, in that spirit, to take back that point and look at it in the wider context of my opening remarks in responding to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I hope that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment at this stage, because we will return to these issues in some detail at Report, hopefully with some more to say.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Other
Robin Granville Hodgson (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank all those who have taken part. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for his two-thirds of a loaf, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, whose amendment I should have referred to in my opening remarks; it was rude of me not to have done so. A table of derivations and destinations is what I think such a table would be called in UK law; it would be a very helpful addition to the schedule to the reports that we have in mind. My noble friend was smooth—to the point that I thought he was going to turn me down on, but at the end the horse swerved in and jumped the fence. I am glad that he has agreed to put this into the mix. I am grateful to him and happy to withdraw the amendment for the time being.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): There speaks the voice of experience. From his time speaking from this side of the Chamber, the noble Lord has perhaps pre-empted some of the concerns that we would have about this proposal, but let me put them on the record I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving us an opportunity to debate this important area. In implementing files under the Bill, it will be necessary to amend existing legislation to reflect updates to the regime. Should all powers under the Bill lapse at a stroke, without replacement, the legal effect on amended legislation would be unclear At a time when we should be seeking to provide industry with clarity and certainty, I am afraid that the amendment would have the unfortunate and unintended effect of providing just the opposite. Rather than minimising the cliff-edge risks, it would create a new series of cliff-edge challenges to be faced in the coming years. The potential for this legislation to lapse without replacement does not provide certainty to firms. Compliance with new regulatory regimes can be costly, and it would have a negative effect on firms’ confidence in the Government’s ability to set effective and proportionate regulation should we implement vital legislative reform only for it to drop away after a given period I appreciate the noble Lord’s concern that regulations made using this power will have a lasting effect on the structure of the UK’s financial services regulatory framework. This is why the power can apply only to a limited set of important files, which have been set out on the face of the Bill. In a no-deal scenario, implementing those files could be crucial to avoid conceding a competitive advantage to businesses operating in EU-based markets or to remain compliant with the Basel rules and meet our G20 commitment to international standards The noble Lord is clearly right, however, in pointing out that this cannot be a long-term model for a regulatory framework. Beyond this temporary solution, once we have left the EU in a no-deal scenario, the Government recognise the clear need for an approach that balances parliamentary oversight of financial services legislation with maintaining the flexibility and competitiveness of our regime. To that end, we will take forward proposals for a sustainable, long-term model in due course It is perhaps worth pointing out also that the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 requires the inclusion of a statutory review clause in secondary legislation that regulates business if the legislation continues to have effect five years after its entry into force. When taking forward SIs under the Bill, the Government will therefore be under a duty to make provision to undertake a post-implementation review after five years or to publish a statement that it is not appropriate in the circumstances to do so. In this light, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw this amendment.
Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-01-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Michael Bates (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I hope I can oblige the noble Lord, Lord Davies, with a constructive response to end Committee. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. I understand that several Members have received representations from the sustainable finance industry. This amendment seeks to add to the Bill’s Schedule two EU files that complete the European Union sustainable finance package As I have mentioned already, the Government acknowledge that the power being sought in this Bill is broad. That is why it has been designed with a number of safeguards and limitations in place. One of these is for the power to be limited to a specified set of EU legislative proposals, named on the face of the Bill. In order to focus the power as narrowly as possible, the list of files in the Schedule to the Bill was determined through an assessment of the importance of files to the stability and competitiveness of the UK’s financial services sector. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, highlighted this as one of his concerns when moving his amendment. In short, these are the files that we believe will be the most important for market functioning and UK competitiveness in a no-deal scenario I will, of course, be very happy to meet the noble Lord, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, on this issue. I think we are already going to be meeting quite a bit between now and next week. I have listened carefully to the arguments in favour of the merits of adding these files to the Schedule, and I undertake to reflect on the matter ahead of returning to it on Report. In the light of this, and of the discussions that will take place, I invite the noble Lord to consider withdrawing his amendment at this stage.
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: Civil Rights
William Garel-Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): But the Supreme Court has made it clear that under the British constitution, while Parliament agreed to hold the referendum, it did not agree on the outcome, and that outcome must be agreed by Parliament. If Parliament cannot agree, the people must be consulted.
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: Civil Rights
Andrew Robathan (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend again. Has he seen the demonstration—unusually, by people supporting leave—outside the Palace of Westminster today, with placards saying, "Parliament versus the People"? Does the Minister consider, given what he has just said, that this might give resonance to the terrible shame of this country, and indeed to the detriment of its democracy?
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: Other
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I have to say that many noble Lords have argued strongly against statutory instruments being approved "overnight", as the noble Lord suggests, in other cases. He is, however, quite correct that there is such a provision. Nevertheless, the original provision is in the legislation. I give way to the noble Lord.
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: Immigration
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord speaks with great experience and wisdom, and he is absolutely correct: the important thing is for us to bring back to Parliament solutions to the backstop that the House of Commons can accept. While I do not want to go into further detail, I can assure him that discussions are continuing as we speak: the Attorney-General was in Brussels yesterday for further talks, which will be continuing at pace as we attempt to get the reassurances that the House of Commons has asked for The debate is taking place in the other place today, and I know that contributions made here will be of great interest to MPs and to those outside this House.
Further Discussions with the European Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union — House of Lords, 2019-02-27
Topic: Other
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely true, of course. I look forward with interest to hearing noble Lords’ contributions this afternoon. I do not know who writes this, but that is good. I must pay tribute to the stamina of many noble Lords on the speakers list today who have spoken in many, if not all, of the Brexit debates we have had in the past few months. Yet again, the challenge will be to introduce new points that we have not heard before: I am sure that noble Lords will rise to the occasion. As usual, my noble and learned friend Lord Keen is champing at the bit in his enthusiasm and looking forward to the utmost to responding to the issues raised in his winding-up speech.