Financial Services Bill — House of Lords, 2021-01-28
Topic: Domestic Commerce
John Reid (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for his remarks. I do not oppose the principle behind the Bill, because, like all noble Lords, no doubt, I recognise the need for post-Brexit stability in financial regulation. The Bill is a mass of detail and the Minister has gone to some lengths to go through it. I confess that it does remind me somewhat of a Christmas tree, with little packages all over the place, some of them no doubt previously stored in various government departments—particularly the Treasury —waiting for an appropriate legislative tree on which to hang them Leaving that aside, the Bill occurs, as the Minister said, at an important moment for the country’s economy and our financial services industry. As the Minister in the Commons said: "Our financial services sector is critical to our national effort to recover from the impacts of Covid-19 and move towards a resilient, open and sustainable future for the UK economy." [Official Report, Commons, 13/1/2; col. 357.] I agree with that, but he stressed the pandemic and we all know that it is more than just a response to Covid. As the Minister said, the Bill is an essential part of the effort to improve the UK’s regulatory framework for financial services following the end of the Brexit transition period As regards our future post-Brexit development, only time will tell, but the early signs do not augur well. Only this month, we approved the post-Brexit trade and co-operation agreement, but, for financial services, this is basically a no-deal agreement. Within a few days of the agreement, £6 billion-worth of euro- denominated share trading shifted from London to European exchanges Of course, the express intention of the Government is to secure a memorandum of understanding on financial services by March, and the ambition for regulatory alignment where appropriate. We should have no illusions how difficult that might prove. Only this week, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, a former EU Financial Services Commissioner and a former Minister leading the Government’s review into the City, has confirmed what many of us have long known. He warned that Brussels is targeting London’s position as a global financial services centre and predicted that the EU will not grant British-based firms the highly prized access they are seeking to the European market. It was not in Brussels’ interests, he said, to allow London to continue to dominate the European financial market in the way it did before Brexit. He continued: "Given that their strategy is to build up the EU, why on earth would they?" Why, indeed? We should not be surprised then that, so far as we now know, Brussels has granted the UK time-limited equivalence on only two of the roughly 40 different financial areas where London is seeking market access. The EU has, of course, given no further indication on when it will take more equivalence decisions I am afraid that the way the Government approached the Brexit negotiations means that there is now no incentive for the EU to agree equivalence arrangements, because their absence means jobs and trading formerly done in London migrating to the EU. Why do I mention this? Herein lies the paradox: the Bill is part of a process aimed at increasing our competitive edge, including vis-à-vis the European Union, but in our present, post-Brexit circumstances any move by the UK to enhance the City’s competitive edge is likely to lessen the chances of progress on equivalence in the EU and the market access that comes with it There are, of course, aspects of the Bill that we welcome. I welcome the preliminary agreement between Gibraltar, the UK and Spain, which the Minister mentioned, and look forward to further detail following review by the European Commission. This is of importance to our whole financial sector, not least to our insurance industry I also welcome the moves that have been made to tighten up the fight against crime, money laundering and fraud, but equally I wonder, despite the passage of this legislation, how that struggle against criminality will have been affected by the loss of 400,000 records from our criminal database. That has been a disaster that will overrule many of the measures in this Bill There are some strange and disappointing omissions from the Bill. I will mention only one, but it is significant. The UK financial services sector has a key role to play in empowering the changes that we need to make to preserve the planet for future generations. But the Bill, which empowers the regulators in so many other ways, is totally silent on that critical issue. The Government say they want the UK to be the centre for green finance globally. Why then, in their first major piece of legislation on this sector since we left the EU, do they say nothing about instructing the regulators to make that a part of their objectives? I hope that the Minister can respond to this Of course, the private investment sector is making strong moves towards greater environmental investing, and there is growth in public demand for these products. But this cannot be done by the private sector alone. It will take both the private sector and the public sector working together and pulling in the same direction. I wish the Bill well in its intent, but I fear that it will fall far short of its aims.