Financial Services Bill

My Lords, Amendment 19 would amend Clause 2(6). Subsection (6) allows for the Council for Financial Stability to meet additionally to its quarterly meetings. This is obviously sensible as quarterly allows a long time between meetings even in times of relative calm. If there were real financial stability issues, we would expect the council to meet more frequently. Clause 2 provides for minutes to be published only of the quarterly meetings of the council. It seems to envisage that the quarterly meetings will consider strategic issues only, as set out in subsection (1). The additional meetings allowed for under subsection (6) could be either strategic or tactical as the subsection does not constrain them at all. The schedule of meetings set out in the terms of reference tie the quarterly meetings to the different reports from the tripartite authorities that will be expected on a quarterly basis. But it must be possible that other strategic issues will arise outside that tidy schedule, for example some new rules from the EU or the Financial Stability Board. The draft terms of reference specifically allow for these extra meetings to cover both strategic and immediate issues. Furthermore, the draft terms of reference say that in the current financial market conditions the council will meet at least monthly. So it is puzzling to find that the clause provides for no minutes of the non-quarterly meetings to be made available, nor do the terms of reference seem to allow for this. This issue was debated in Committee in another place in connection with a slightly different amendment. The Minister’s reply was along the lines that if the council had to give minutes for every meeting but had to remove all items of substance, that could itself be harmful. He made the distinction strongly between quarterly strategic meetings and other meetings but, as I have tried to show, the terms of reference do not confine strategic issues to the quarterly meetings, and not every item on the agenda of non-quarterly meetings, even if of an urgent nature, will need to be removed using the criteria in subsection (5) which we debated in the previous group of amendments. None of this makes sense except in the context of a Government who believe in only a bit of transparency but not enough to really embrace the concept. It may be that my amendment is not quite right because I can see that there could be circumstances when to announce that a meeting has taken place, even if it is a month later, but not to reveal anything about it, might be a problem. We should be able to redraft this so that the fact of a meeting, as well as its content, is capable of escaping publication using the subsection (5) let-outs. But we should not draft the Bill on the basis that everything that happens outside the quarterly meetings must be kept out of the public domain since it is clearly intended that the council will meet in addition to the quarterly meetings. I hope that the Government will see that their half-hearted commitment to transparency will fool no one and could harm the credibility of the Council for Financial Stability. In another place the Minister was keen to say that the council was part of creating trust in the UK’s financial stability. I have to say to the Minister that partial transparency is not a hallmark of trustworthiness. I beg to move.