Financial Services Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-09
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Patrick Bosco McFadden (Labour, Centre-left): If we read the political declaration, we can see that this was all supposed to be wrapped up by June. We are now approaching mid-November. The hon. Gentleman is certainly right to suggest that the time has slipped Subsequent clauses in the Bill go through a number of other EU directives and the onshoring process. They cover the markets and financial instruments regulation, the market abuse regulation, European markets infrastructure regulation dealing with over-the-counter derivatives, and the EU financial collateral directive. I have no doubt we will have a lot of fun with all of them in Committee. On money laundering, we will want to see as strong a system as possible to ensure that the UK is no safe harbour for anyone who wants to wash dirty money, avoid taxes or evade accountability. Again, I am sure the Minister is expecting more discussion of this as the Bill progresses. He and I debated the statutory debt repayment plan a few weeks ago, and Labour supports moves to create this system. It will be particularly important in the light of the increasing debt burden on many families due to the covid pandemic, and the sooner it is in place, the better On PRIIPS, the Government propose to remove the performance scenarios. The question, of course, is what they will be replaced with, how useful and accessible the information for consumers will be and what protections will be in place against the mis-selling of products or fraudulent claims. The imbalance of information is always a challenge in financial products because, in most cases, the seller knows more than the purchaser. Regulators have an important duty to be on the side of the consumer when it comes to the marketing of such products, so if the current performance scenarios are to go, they must be replaced with something better that will genuinely help the consumer. Other measures, including the fixed term for the FCA chief executive, have finally found the legislative home for which they have been waiting in the Treasury for some time That is, broadly speaking, what the Bill legislates for, but there are important areas, as the Minister said, that are not included. The most obvious is access to cash. Cash use has declined markedly this year, as people have moved to more online shopping and many businesses have moved to card-only payments, but this is not a trend that falls evenly on the population. Most of the population might need less cash or, in some cases, no cash in the future, but we have a duty to ensure access to cash for those who still need it, including many on low incomes for whom cash budgeting is a vital way of making ends meet. If we do not do that, inequality will be sharpened and there is a real danger that cash-dependent consumers will be cut off from important areas of economic activity. The Government have said—the Minister repeated it tonight—that they want to ensure access to cash, but if that cannot be done through this Bill, we urge the Minister to come forward with appropriate measures as soon as possible. Standing back and looking at all this, I get an overwhelming feeling of it being all deckchairs and no iceberg. The Government can, of course, rearrange the regulatory furniture, and in many areas that is a necessary consequence of leaving the EU, but the bigger policy decision to downgrade financial services in the negotiations was taken a long time ago. The Chancellor talked today about the economic and employment importance of this industry, and he was absolutely right to emphasise that, but the more he emphasises it, the more it begs the question why market access for this crucial sector, and indeed services in general, has not been a negotiating priority for the Government. The truth is that, in this negotiation, services have been thrown under the bus On manufacturing, we have also moved further and further away from the earlier promises of frictionless trade, exact same benefits and all the rest. The fact that these things are not front and centre of the final round of talks is not because agreement on them has already been reached, but because the Government have decided not even to prioritise them. That is a louder testament to where we have ended up in this process than anything in the Bill. This is a series of measures that are trying to compensate for much bigger decisions. This will create more trading friction and more market barriers for our crucial financial services, and for our broader services industry and manufacturing. In the end, no amount of cutting and pasting of EU directives or last-minute vision statements can change that bigger picture.