UK Parliament / Open data

Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

We have had a wide-ranging debate and heard some useful, thoughtful and constructive contributions. Everyone has had the opportunity to make all the points they wanted to—except, perhaps, for the Father of the House, who understandably bemoaned the fact that he had only 12 minutes. He might well be disappointed not to have been here at a later stage of the debate to give us the benefit of his wisdom, as he certainly gave us an interesting contribution.

We heard the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mike Thornton). He paid tribute to his predecessors in the traditional style, but raised a number

of important points, not least of which was about bank lending and particularly the lending scheme for small businesses.

I would like to pick up some of the general points and themes running through the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) gave a comprehensive opening speech from the Opposition Front Bench. Other Members picked up the point that he made that we cannot have any repetition of the actions that led to the taxpayer bail-out. The actions and attitudes of the bankers meant that the banking sector—or individuals in it, as many hon. Members have said—thought that it was okay to retain the profits privately when the sun shone, to use that metaphor, but to let the losses fall to the public purse when the rainstorms arrived. We simply cannot allow a repetition of such risks to taxpayers in the future. That is why the banks must be reformed here in the UK, and further reformed in the EU and across the world.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East outlined—it was echoed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern)—our financial sector is larger than most. The greatest global financial centre is in the City of London, and there are important centres in Edinburgh and across the UK, so we have to take any additional steps required to guard against any risk of future collapse.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East also spoke eloquently about the passage of the Financial Services Act 2012, which sought to address some regulatory shortcomings. Many hon. Members will have heard him during the course of the Public Bill Committee speaking eloquently—and, I have to say, frequently—about many of the issues that we are looking to this Bill to address. He highlighted a number of them, including concerns about LIBOR.

I hope that the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) will take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East. The hon. Gentleman talked a lot about regulatory shortcomings, but we need to remember how members of the public and ordinary people in the street will view this issue. People in the banks were culpable; they were individuals who somehow thought it was all right to take those risks and—[Interruption.] I hear the hon. Gentleman say, from a sedentary position, that it was our system. At the end of the day we can have systems, we can have regulatory reform, we can have all those rules in place, but if the culture and the attitude of the people involved do not change, that will simply lead to more problems in the future. Members on both sides of the House have recognised that today. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman, who, I understand, previously had a career in the banking industry and, indeed, in regulation, does not seem to accept that individuals as well as systemic failures bear some responsibility.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
560 cc114-5 
Session
2012-13
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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