Financial Services Bill

I spoke on Second Reading, and nothing that I have seen makes any alteration to the view that I expressed in relation to the problem that I have raised continuously with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister about the distinction between national supervision, which is just a figure of speech, and national control. I do not need to go into this in great detail because it can all be summarised very simply. We are losing national control over our financial services, which makes nonsense of Second Reading, Committee and Report. I am astonished that less attention is given to this than it merits. In the context of parliamentary sovereignty and the necessity for us to determine the manner in which we are governed, which in turn affects the manner in which the Financial Services Authority interacts with the Bank of England, and the completely pointless exercise of the council for financial stability, the whole architecture is overarched not only by the banking supervisory authorities that are being created by a series of legislative changes in the European Union using, I think, the ordinary legislative procedure but by the fact that we have effectively walked away from our responsibilities. I am absolutely astonished by the fact that we can go through these proceedings, in what is an almost empty House, without at least acknowledging that we are throwing away the ability to run our affairs and putting the City of London in great peril because of the duties that the Bill imposes. The clause on the council for financial stability says:""Among other things"—" as if it is a kind of option—""the duty"." Duty means "shall", which in turn means enforceable by a court, subject of course to the European Court of Justice, because these matters are being handed over to the supervisory authorities and everything that flows from de Larosière right the way through to the financial regulations that the European Scrutiny Committee insisted be debated. By the way, I am extremely glad that our Front Benchers actually opposed those regulations, thank God, because at least that gives us some future purchase on our ability to retrieve some of the mess that has been created. Exactly how all that will work out remains to be seen, but under the clause on financial stability, the duty requires the council to "co-ordinate". That is not the same as co-operate, because "co-ordinate" means a legal obligation to implement the laws, not, in the broad context in which it is normally understood, to co-operate. The council is required to""co-ordinate any action taken by the relevant authorities to promote international financial regulation and supervision"." Great. Supervision, as I have said, is subsidiary to national control, but the critical words are,""the duty…to co-ordinate any action…to promote international financial regulation"." Are we seriously mad? I may think that some members of the Government are, without mentioning them by name, but it is absolutely astonishing that we should allow that measure to go through on the pretext that, somehow or other, it will improve the stability of the UK financial system. It is invidious to go through the Bill for this purpose, but over and over again we find that we are faced with a requirement to accept a subsidiary role in financial regulation. My hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban), on the Front Bench, will understand me when I say that he and I have had a few words about that in the past, but I generally agree that we need proper fiscal responsibility, as I said in last week's debates over and over again. This Government are fiscally irresponsible, but the proposed institutional arrangements are to be subjected to the decision-making processes of the European Union and the European Court of Justice, as I said on Second Reading. It is therefore no answer to say, as the Chancellor tried to say to me on the Icelandic banks situation, "Oh well, it gives us some kind of leverage," when, in fact, we are to use the European Union to try to redress the balance if other countries want to do to us things that we do not like. Do we have no self-respect anymore? Do we not believe that we can run our own affairs? This is not just a cri de coeur; it is about the practical workings of the City of London, which are being put under intense pressure and threat and, indeed, put into abeyance. When the crunch comes and the legislation has made its way through the European Parliament, the milk-and-water, pathetic, third-rate, abject surrender to this process, which has been going on for several months and which I wrote about, if I may presume to say so, Madam Deputy Speaker, in the Financial Times way back in February last year—