Financial Services Bill

The second issue that I want to raise is that of accountability. I want to draw the Chancellor's attention to the danger of giving great powers to unelected officials, which can have a significant effect. One of the witnesses raised the parallel of the responsibility given in the sphere of health to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. NICE determines the availability of drugs and treatment, and when a particular decision is made, elected politicians are under great pressure to reverse it. It does not wash with most constituents to tell them that the decision is one for the regulator. They may understand that politicians have given up the power, but they rarely accept that we do not retain the ability to alter a decision that is painful to them—and why should they? That is very similar to what will happen when powers are given to the Bank of England and the Financial Policy Committee. The Chancellor is handing power to the Bank on matters that will inevitably extend beyond the financial sector to the real economy. One example is interpretation of the financial stability objective. The Chancellor is given the opportunity to set an annual remit for the FPC, but to ensure the Bank's independence, the Bill accepts that the FPC may refuse to accept the Chancellor's remit. The Joint Committee recommended that the Treasury, not the Financial Policy Committee, should have the final say on the interpretation of the remit. It did suggest, however, that the FPC should make public its objections to the annual remit, and should alert the Treasury Committee. Giving evidence to the Joint Committee, Lord Burns said:"““if there is any part of this set of proposals that concerns me, it is probably to do with the governance of the FPC in relation both to its accountability to Parliament through the Treasury and the extent to which it can be defined as 'independent'.””" That is a stark reminder of how much is being conceded by the Chancellor. His annual remit on how the Financial Policy Committee should interpret and pursue the financial stability objective can be disregarded by the committee. To illustrate the importance of that, I cannot do better than to read out the words of the Joint Committee:"““The tools available to the FPC could allow a reversion to a level of central intervention in credit flows that has not been practised in the UK since the period of 'Competition and Credit Control' in the early 1970s. Such interventions would, for example, often affect mortgage availability and loans to households and companies. Given the wide range of possible interventions, and absence of any quantifiable target for financial stability corresponding to the inflation target for monetary stability, the FPC's decisions will be more politically controversial than those of the MPC.””" Bizarrely, the Government have not accepted that when there is a difference, the FPC must accept the will of the elected Government, but have accepted that the FPC may make its defiance public. The Chancellor is not only allowing the FPC to defy him, but encouraging those unelected officials to tell the world that they have done so. That strikes me as a very strange working method. The third issue that I wish to raise concerns a different aspect of a matter that has been discussed by the Front Benches. Who is in charge in a crisis? That is the question that was asked by Lord McFall at the time of the Northern Rock crisis. It shook the regulators, and it voiced the thoughts of the general public. There is a genuine wish to prevent such a situation from arising again. The accepted answer is that the Chancellor is responsible, and that therefore he should be in charge when there is a crisis. That seems sensible and straightforward to most people, but not to the territorially sensitive Bank of England. Nigel Lawson heard about the Johnson Matthey crisis, and the need for him to commit Government money, on the morning when it broke. He was understandably upset. Before the resort of using public money is accepted, the Chancellor should be made aware of the difficulties. I shall now depart from my script, because I have only a minute left. We in the Joint Committee and in the Treasury Committee were trying to be helpful to the Chancellor. We made a recommendation, which the Chancellor accepted, that when a crisis arose or he was warned of one, he should take direct command. The memorandum of understanding—this is a different point from the one raised by the shadow Chancellor—has been nicely arranged, by the Bank, I presume, to ensure that even in those circumstances he does not have direct control. The Bank remains operationally in control, and the Chancellor can speak only about matters relating to the public funds to be used to deal with the crisis. We wanted to give him the opportunity to make a full range of decisions to avoid the use of public funds, and I hope that the Minister will consider that.