Financial Services Bill

My Lords, I shall move Amendment 16 and speak to Amendments 18 and 24 which amend Clauses 2 and 3. These amendments are still on the theme of the minutes of the Council for Financial Stability, because it is such an interesting topic. Under Clause 2(5), the minutes of the quarterly meetings are not required to be published if one of three exceptions applies. They are: commercial confidentiality; non-interference with action by the tripartite authorities; and anything which is a threat to financial stability. We might conclude that there is enough wriggle room in those exceptions for the minutes to contain virtually nothing at all of interest, but I shall not pursue that theme. My concern today is with the first let-out of commercial confidentiality. I have two different concerns, which my amendments address. Amendment 16 inserts "or market sensitive" into the first exception, so that matters would not need to be included in the minutes if they were commercially confidential or market sensitive. That is, I am offering the Government an even wider exception than that drafted. I am starting from the assumption that the Government would not want the minutes to contain market-sensitive material; if I am wrong on that, doubtless the Minister will correct me. Clearly, something can be commercially confidential and not market sensitive. The two might have the same meaning on a particular matter for a large organisation, but would likely not have the same degree of correspondence for a smaller organisation. I was not sure whether Clause 2(5)(b) and (c) covered all the market sensitive bases either. Something that was market sensitive—in the sense that financial markets would react to the information—might not stop the tripartite authorities from acting. Similarly, something might be market sensitive but would not itself pose a threat to financial stability and come within the terms of Clause 2(5)(c). My point is that if the Government want to prevent the release of market-sensitive information in those minutes, are they absolutely sure that they have the drafting of Clause 2(5) correct? Amendment 18 addresses a different point; what is meant by "commercial confidentiality" in this Bill? As was pointed out in the other place, the Bill does not define commercial confidentiality—an excuse which the Government often use when there is nothing commercial or confidential at all. Anyone who has looked at responses to freedom of information requests will find how elastic the concept can be. My amendment merely requires that the council should set out what it understands by commercial confidentiality for the purposes of the permission not to include material in the council’s minutes under Clause 2(5)(a) or the annual report under Clause 3(3). An alternative approach would be for the Government to add a definition to Clause 4, but that solution would be less flexible and I know how Governments always like to preserve flexibility. I have not yet mentioned Amendment 24, which is a mirror image of Amendment 16 but relates to the annual report rather than the minutes. I beg to move.