Financial Services Bill

I shall come to the Bill's proposals on consumer protection, which we need to do more about. I am very much aware of the campaign being urged on us about pre-payment. We had some experience of that with the Farepak problems a couple of years ago. The provisions are not in the Bill because at this stage of this Parliament I wanted to keep the measure sufficiently small and manageable to ensure that, as I hope, it will complete all its stages before the end of the Session., That is not to say, however, that legislation on further consumer protection will not be necessary. I shall turn shortly to the measures that I propose. The purposes of the Bill are to build on the action that we took over the past year. We want to strengthen and reform financial regulation, as well as support better corporate governance and give more rights to consumers. The Bill ensures that prudential regulation and supervision of firms is more effective. It will place far greater emphasis on monitoring and managing system-wide risks and will tighten the powers available to the FSA on the remuneration of banks, which is important for financial stability, as well as providing consumers of financial products with better support and protection. Our central objective must be to ensure that as we come through these problems, we reform and strengthen the financial system and rebuild it for the future.