Uncertificated Securities (Amendment and EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-02-25
Topic: Domestic Commerce
John Kevin Sharkey (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I accept that the two regulations in this group are closely linked and I have only one question and one comment. The question relates to the waivers that the Treasury may issue under the terms of the investment exchanges, CCPs and CSDs SI. Paragraph 117 of the impact assessment to this SI explains that, if the Treasury makes an equivalence decision on a third country jurisdiction and the Bank has recognised a third country CSD, this will mean that the third country CSD will be subject to Part 18 of FSMA. As the Minister has said, this will give the Bank the power to make rules requiring information about events specified in those rules and to require the third country CSD to give written notice to a regulator of a change to its own rules or guidance The Bank could also require a third-country CSD to give reports on the CSD services it provides in the UK and related statistical information. As the Minister said, the Bank may also inspect any branch of a third country CSD in the UK. There is also the rather threatening addition, "enforceable by injunction". All of this seems eminently sensible. However, the impact assessment includes a provision which qualifies the use of these powers. It means that, for instance, "the Bank may waive the above rules in respect of a third country CSD where it is satisfied that compliance with those rules would be unduly burdensome and the waiver would not result in undue risk" I take it that this waiver power is intended primarily to help the continued co-operation of CSDs within the EEA. My question is whether, if the Bank does make such waivers, they be will in the public domain and whether the Bank will explain the reasons for supposing the rules to be unduly burdensome and for supposing that exercising the waiver will not result in undue risk—whatever "undue" may mean in this context My comment has to do with paragraph 10 of the EM to this instrument. The paragraph explains in some detail, and with the appropriate references, the outcome of the consultation on the implementation of the CSDR. This was extremely helpful, and it illustrates a key difference between consultation and engagement. Noble Lords will know that many of the Brexit SIs laid by the Treasury have not been consulted on. The Explanatory Memorandums say when this is the case, and frequently follow this by noting that there has instead been extensive engagement with stakeholders. But in no case that I can recall have the EMs given any detail about the questions that arose in these engagements, the no doubt various views expressed by stakeholders or any modifications that may have been made to the draft as a result of these engagements. By contrast, as the current EM demonstrates, consultation gives a clearer, well-defined, comprehensive outcome and even demonstrates how government thinking has been changed. In this case, the three respondents were obviously very persuasive Engagement with no detail is a very unsatisfactory substitute for consultation. I realise that it is now too late to conduct consultations on the no-deal Brexit SIs that are before us and on those that will come before us. I think that we have only one more Treasury SI to consider—or at least very few. I ask the Government in general to be much more informative about engagement. I ask them to consider providing in the Explanatory Memorandums at least a list of stakeholders engaged with and a summary of what issues were raised by the Government and the stakeholders, what opinions were expressed and what changes were made as a result of these engagements.