UK Parliament / Open data

Financial Services Bill

Proceeding contribution from Lord Sassoon (Conservative) in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 20 November 2012. It occurred during Debate on bills on Financial Services Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, asked the question very clearly earlier. If he would give me another minute or two I will get to his important point. He asked a lot of questions, as did other noble Lords, but it is the next point that I shall come to.

The noble Lord identified something that is consciously in the drafting: it sets a line between purely physical commodity markets where there are other provisions in place which cover price setting. In energy markets, if we are talking about a purely physical commodity price setting, Ofgem is the regulator and has the investigative and enforcement powers for the manipulation of physical markets under the so-called remit legislation. I appreciate that the line drawn raises the questions that the noble Lord has quite rightly asked. With pure commodities that are consciously dealt with in other legislation, Ofgem would be the principle regulator. However, gas, oil and other commodity benchmarks may well be referenced by derivatives or other financial instruments, in which case they are included in this definition. So, pure commodities are not included, but if they are referenced by derivatives or other financial instruments, that is covered in this definition of investment.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
740 c1746 
Session
2012-13
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Back to top