Financial Services Bill

The Council for Financial Stability has had two meetings in shadow form. One was a quarterly strategic meeting, the minutes of which have been published and are available on the Treasury website. They meet many of the tests that noble Lords have set in terms of clarity and clear attribution of comments, with a focus on the contributions made by the members of the council, including those of some of the bit-part players who have been allowed to make modest contributions and to have their moment in the sun. The council is meeting again this week in its shadow format. The two non-quarterly meetings—that is the one that we have held and the one that we are holding later this week—deal very much with issues of the moment relating to markets, individual companies and economies. I do not think that it would be right for me to go further than that, without undermining our very clear distinctions. The quarterly strategic meetings will, importantly, focus on the reports published by the Bank of England and by the Financial Services Authority on financial stability and on financial risk. I note again that the discussion at the Council for Financial Stability takes place after the publication of those reports, so that there is no fettering of the ability of the Bank of England and the FSA to publish their views openly. The fourth major publication moment for the quarterly meetings will be the report published by the Council for Financial Stability under the direction of the Treasury. So there is a very clear distinction and difference between the issues of the moment of the monthly meetings, as they are at the moment, which rather speak to at least some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Stewartby—although my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham was correct in reminding the House that the Council for Financial Stability is not an executive body—and the quarterly meetings, which are more reflective in terms of their focus on the central risks to the financial system.