My Lords, I have amendments in the next group and so will keep most of my comments on this aspect of the Bill until then.
I wholeheartedly endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said in moving this amendment and, indeed, what the noble Lord, Lord Peston, has just said. The problem for all of us, most particularly my noble friend the Minister, is to try to contrive a state of affairs for the future which is fundamentally different from that which has prevailed hitherto. I think everybody in the House agrees that we cannot go on as we have done. The City of London, which has been the jewel in our economic crown, is now so tarnished and undermined by its own conduct that its future is far from certain.
I have been involved in the City of London since 1964. It has strayed so far from its own mottoes of “My word is my bond” and “May God direct us” as to become almost laughable—indeed, “tragic” is a better word.
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If one is to be hard-headed about this—there is no other way than to be extremely hard-headed when dealing with the financial sector—one has to own up to the fact that codes of conduct have not worked very well hitherto. One will find that nearly all the main actors within the City are members of professional, or quasi-professional, bodies that have codes of conduct, but the fact remains that, in the City and in other financial centres, the general level of conduct, particularly of what used to be called morals, has declined to an unsustainable point. We are not on our own but we are better than most. I say that while supporting the sentiment of the amendment because, frankly, even if it were on the face of the statute, it would not be worth a row of beans unless it were enforced.
The great failing in our society, and in our financial sector over the past few decades, has been a lamentable gap between what the law requires and what is enforced on the ground. There is no shortage of criminal law to deal with most of the worst abuses that have occurred and are still occurring; we have a plethora of criminal law and probably more than any democratic society on earth, but the problem is enforceability. I hope that my noble friend will address that issue when he responds to the amendment because it is equally relevant to the next set and to other sets of amendments. Unless we can beef up the authorities that have the hugely difficult task of policing these hugely complicated measures, we cannot pretend that they will work. Some of the most fertile and brilliant brains in lawyering, accounting and so on are available for hire in the City to anyone prepared to pay their generous fees. Unless the measures that we emerge with at the end of this process are clear, you can be sure that they will be got around.
The failure of our tax system, about which we hear more from month to month, is a classic tale of legislation that is unfit for purpose and, above all, an enforcement resource that is grotesquely unfit for purpose. Any one of the large banks can wheel out more lawyers and accountants to defend them from a single thrust from the regulator than the regulator has in its entirety. It is not David and Goliath; it is David, without his sling, and Goliath. This is a very difficult Bill to be leading on and this is perhaps the most difficult aspect of a difficult Bill but I hope my noble friend will have something to say on enforcement.