With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. It has been a good debate and a number of important issues have been raised, so I want to take a few minutes to respond.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson), started by making a number of points on the payments system regulator. One issue she raised was whether there could possibly be a gap before the payments system regulator came into full force. That is a reasonable question and of course we will do all we can to minimise that.
It is worth pointing out that although the Payments Council, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) referred, has not always done a spectacular job as an industry body, particularly on cheques, it has recently put in place some useful innovations under the influence of the Government, such as the current account switching service. It is also developing a mobile phone database. We have been assured that such initiatives will continue and will not slow down because of the plans to set up a payments system regulator.
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The hon. Lady mentioned VocaLink and concerns about payment service providers and who will be designated as part of the payments system and therefore be regulated. As she knows, and as set out in the clauses, the Treasury will designate the systems. To provide clarity we set out in the other place and elsewhere during the consultation the kinds of systems that we expect to be designated, which will be the main interbank systems, international card schemes such as BACS, CHAPS, Faster Payments, LINK, Cheque and Credit, Visa, MasterCard, and Amex. I hope that is helpful.
A number of hon. Members spoke to the Opposition amendment on data sharing, amendment (a), including the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who I know has considerable expertise from her experience at Citizens Advice, so I take her comments very seriously indeed. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) referred to his private Member’s Bill, which, as he said, had cross-party support in the House. What hon. Members, including the shadow Minister, said on the subject of data sharing is very important and I agree with all the concerns they articulated, especially the importance of real-time data collection and the difference that it can make. I share all their concerns and I agree with the benefits of consumer protection that data sharing can provide. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun mentioned StepChange, a charity whose representatives I have met a number of times. I discussed the matter with them and they, too, raised a number of important points. I agree with their analysis.
We all agree about the benefits of sharing information. The question is what we can do about it. The good news is that, because we agree, the Government have discussed the matter with the regulator, the FCA, which made a clear commitment that it plans to take action. It has already started down that course and is working with the industry on this. In the letter that I referred to at the start, the FCA said clearly that if the industry does not help to bring about the sharing of information sooner rather than later, it will not hesitate to make rules. It already has the powers to make such rules.