Financial Services Bill

That is why it is important that at the very least they have information, and some level of accountability, about the likely costs of this tangle of regulatory structures for them. The Association of British Insurers has voiced its concerns about the costs of the new regulatory system and it is important that we at least know from the Minister exactly what those costs will be. He skirted around the issue in Committee. Even when I asked the cost of the new building for the PRA next to Threadneedle street he said that that might be commercial in confidence. If he can help us with that I will be grateful. The hon. Member for Chichester also spoke about publication of the minutes of the Bank of England's court of directors. Amendment 27 seeks to introduce exactly the same for the FCA. If the FCA is to be a consumer champion, at the very least consumers should be able to see what is being discussed, who—potentially—is discussing it and, most importantly, what the nature is of the dialectic and discussions going on in its board. The Financial Secretary said in Committee that that will be a matter for the FCA, even though he could not really argue against the transparency principle, but he did promise that he would think about it. I saw a chink of light at the time and thought that publication of the FCA's minutes was a simple concession that we might get in the Bill. I hope that he has had a chance to reflect on that. Amendment 39 relates to the relationship between the new regulators and the European supervisory arrangements. We might think that all these decisions on regulating credit, businesses and financial services are for us to take domestically in the UK, but I am afraid that 80% of the regulatory decisions are in fact taken in Brussels by the European Commission. Commissioner Barnier has his pipeline of proposals, which is very much the driving force behind the regulatory arrangements. Some of those are good changes, but nevertheless many people feel that the UK's domestic regulators are there merely to transpose what is decided further up the chain, and that is of concern. Therefore, we want the regulators to be fit for purpose and able properly to influence and steer some of the policy decisions that are taken in Brussels. However, we have concerns that the way the regulators have been set up, moving between conduct and prudential regulation, sits ill at ease with the thematic way in which the pensions regulator, the banking regulator and the securities and markets regulator have been set up in Europe and that this mismatch could cause a significant hiatus in the way the UK exerts its influence. Therefore, amendment 39 simply asks that within a year of the Bill being enacted we have a review to test whether there is a need to improve the effectiveness of the way our regulators influence European regulators. It is a simple amendment. Finally, amendment 28 would leave out clause 5 altogether. It was with great regret that I decided that we needed to table the amendment, but the Bill is deficient in so many ways, as the hon. Member for Chichester suggested, that we felt we needed to address it. There is: the mismatch with the European regulators, which risks the further dilution of UK influence; the cost of having multiple regulators with insufficient effort to bear down on wasted duplication; the lack of a clear focus on tackling financial exclusion for those on the lowest incomes; poor scrutiny of the new rules that the regulators will generate; and insufficient transparency about the regulators and how they will reach decisions. It is for those reasons that we think that the Government have to go back to the drawing board and rethink, clarify and amend clause 5. The House of Commons should not have to approve such poorly drafted and inadequate arrangements for the FCA and the PRA. We hope that improvements can be made in the House of Lords.