Financial Services Bill

I cannot let the Minister’s long reply go unanswered because there are important points on this clause and the other three clauses dealing with the Council for Financial Stability. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, challenged me on why three-quarters of the people he met did not believe in the prescription put forward by my party. I cannot say whom he meets in the City, but that is perhaps reconcilable with the view of my noble friend Lord Trenchard that three-quarters of the people do not think that the FSA is effective. If you ask people in the City whether they want change, on the whole they say no, and that they prefer the devil they know. But if you ask another question about whether there is a joined-up approach between macro and micro-prudential, they will agree with us. It depends which question is asked and it depends whether they want the FSA to be abolished or whether they want more effective macro and micro-prudential regulation. They are different aspects of the policy. I accept that there can be different views. We say that the most important thing is the joining up again of macro and micro-prudential supervision. I apologise to my noble friends who cannot bear those terms; I have got rather used to using them. Although I accept that they are inelegant, they have meaning to those of us who have learnt how to use them. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that I am sorry if he misunderstood what we are trying to say about consumer protection. I think he suggested that our proposals for a new consumer protection authority would have no leverage and no authority. That is absolutely not what we wish to create. Putting consumer protection and prudential supervision together means that probably neither is done completely effectively. We certainly believe that consumer protection masked the other. That is why we believe that we will have better consumer protection with a dedicated consumer protection agency. It is not our desire to create a weak piece of the system; our intention is to create something that is a strong part of the system. I hope he understands that. I thank my noble friends who have spoken, all of whom have supported the fact that the FSA failed, the tripartite arrangements failed and this Bill has a cosmetic response. The Minister seems to be in denial about that. He said that our policies would have a bifurcation function, but that is not so. We are reuniting macro and micro-prudential supervision. The Government’s proposals keep them apart. The Minister has not rebutted our charge that these are merely cosmetic changes which create no change in substance. We will return to these clauses at another time, either on the Floor of this Chamber or in the process that we discussed earlier, known as wash-up. That is all I have to say on Clause 1 stand part. Clause 1, as amended, agreed. Amendment 11 Moved by