My Lords, as the noble Baroness says, we discussed this at some length in Committee and, to a certain extent, I am afraid I can only repeat what I said then. I repeat that FiSMA already requires the FSA to maintain a publicly available record of individuals subject to prohibition orders. The relevant subsection simply says that the register must include a record of every,
“individual to whom a prohibition order relates”.
and provides that the register must include the name of the individual and,
“details of the effect of the”,
prohibition order.
The FCA will keep these records in future and the Bill, in paragraph 17 of Schedule 12, also requires the PRA to assist the FCA in keeping the record up to date, including by notifying the FCA of every prohibition order that the PRA makes. The principal effect of the amendment would be to move these records from the FSA website on to the Treasury website. The noble Baroness said, in effect, that the Treasury website would almost command more respect or be more likely to be looked at for this purpose. We disagree with that. The Treasury website sets out government policy, not records of regulatory decisions. The logical place to go for a record of a regulatory decision is to the regulator. We think that it would be confusing if investors expected to go to the Treasury website rather than to the regulator’s website to get the relevant names and other information. In our view, it would be contrary to the noble Baroness’s stated objective of ensuring clarity and transparency. I am afraid I cannot give her much comfort. We believe that what we are doing meets her requirements and that those are better met by doing it via the regulator’s website rather than via the Treasury website.