Indeed, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for taking the time to participate in this debate. A string of amendments that we will discuss later cover consumer credit and the interests of consumers, and we will talk about ease of access to financial services when we consider them. He is right, as the Bank of England is a key player in this regard.
That point neatly takes me on to our amendment (a) to Lords amendment 16. It tries to ensure that under the new arrangements the Bank of England—in particular, the new powerful committee that is being established,
called the Financial Policy Committee—will, when it explains the decisions it is taking, also have to include an assessment of the impact of its decisions on economic growth. I know that the whole question of jobs and growth is somewhat of a blind spot for Treasury Ministers, but notwithstanding their rather peculiar inability to see the importance of these issues, we feel that it is important to put that requirement in the Bill.
We are delighted and overjoyed that the Government finally relented and granted a concession in the other place, after months of labour in Committee in this place, by agreeing to Lords amendment 10. It was a major victory for the Opposition when the Government were forced to change the Bill to ensure that the FPC would not only contribute to the financial stability objective but, subject to that, support the economic policies of Her Majesty’s Government, including their objectives for growth and employment. That concession was made because of the amendments we tabled and the evidence heard in Committee from a wide number of organisations, including the British Bankers Association, the CBI, the London stock exchange and others. They all said in submissions to Parliament that the new regulators should have regard to growth, so we are glad that the FPC has that general backstop requirement on its shoulders. However, we do not think it goes far enough.
As I said earlier, the powers the Bank of England will take—that rather opaquely described set of macro-prudential tools—will be very wide ranging. Each time it pulls one of those levers, each time it makes a particular decision, it should explain the impact of that change. The Bank of England will be able to affect a number of key areas. Perhaps the Minister will tell us when the draft order at the back of the Treasury’s consultation document is likely to find its way on to the Floor of the House for debate, because I know that a number of hon. Members will be interested in that.
The Bank will have powers called counter-cyclical capital buffers. I know that the Treasury Bench has a difficulty with the concept of counter-cyclicality, but it essentially means that banks will be required to build up capital when times are rather exuberant and things are going well in the economy, but to unwind those capital buffers in a downturn. The Bank will say that there should be sectoral capital requirements. In other words, the FPC can make the residential mortgage sector have a certain amount of capital or structure its business in a particular way. The commercial property sector will have to do the same. This is a Bank of England decision, not the result of parliamentary or legislative changes. Consumer credit decisions will be made. If my hon. Friends have constituents who pay off their credit card, perhaps currently a 2% or 5% minimum repayment on a monthly basis, at the flick of a switch the Bank of England will be able to say, “No, you have to pay off 10% each month,” or perhaps even more. That is the sort of power that the Bank of England will have.