Draft Financial Services Bill (Joint Committee)

I agree. To be honest, my answer to the question of the second Chamber is ultimately to vote to abolish it. I have always been a unicameralist and think that if we did the job here better we would get legislation that was not only better, but more timely and well drafted, and we would not have the theatricals that we have to go through with the other place. The draft legislation is being put forward and I welcome that process. I sat on one of the very first Joint Committees in 2003—the Joint Committee on the draft Civil Contingencies Bill. As a new Member, that was a very good process and learning curve, because it included young and inexperienced Members of this House, such as the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and myself, and Members of the House of Lords, such as Lord Archer, a former Solicitor-General, and Lord Condon, who is a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner. They brought a wealth of experience to that process, which was a good one in that it could not be replicated by the usual way in which we conduct legislative scrutiny in this place. The most important thing was that out of the 130 amendments that were tabled, well over 100 were accepted. The important thing about this Committee will be whether it genuinely conducts pre-legislative scrutiny and whether the Government will really consider changing their proposals. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw talked about the House of Lords. I feel uncomfortable not about joint legislative scrutiny with the House of Lords, which is a good process, but about having it for financial matters. That makes me a bit nervous. Not only the membership of the Committee from this House, but the selection process in the other place, which is nothing to do with us, as I well know, have not been thought through. Getting the balance right is a difficult job. The supremacy of this place in dealing with financial issues has to be maintained. I would not like, as my hon. Friend said, for this to be a chink in the armour that breaks the convention that this House, not the other place, deals with finance. Unfortunately, that point seems to have been glossed over in the way that the Government and the usual channels have put the process together. The Procedure Committee or others might want to look in detail at how such Joint Committees come into being. I would not want it to become a regular occurrence for Joint Committees, including those considering financial issues, to have Members of the other place sitting on them and determining what is taken forward. It will be difficult to get the Bill right. It will be like finding the ark of the covenant to find a regulatory system that everyone agrees with and that protects the public from the scenes that we saw a few years ago. It is interesting that we hear the Conservatives say these days that they are now for more regulation, even though in the 1980s they deregulated the financial markets and then called for less regulation when the previous Labour Government of whom I was a member were bringing in legislation. I am concerned about the short time scale that is being allowed for the Bill. The motion says that"““the Committee should report on the draft Bill by 1 December 2011.””" We are about to go into a long recess and the Committee will have to work through that to keep to that timetable. I wonder why that date was inserted. Getting this right is more important than any headlines the Government wish to create so that they can say they have solved the problem of the regulation of the banks. The date needs to be reconsidered and the timetable extended.