My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for provoking this short debate. I heed what the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, have said. I shall try to explain the Government's position. I need to examine the very insightful comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and may want to return to some of them in writing. If I do not address them here, I shall endeavour to do so in writing.
At first glance, this seems an obvious and straightforward requirement to impose on authorised persons. As the noble Lord will be aware, this requirement was introduced by the coalition Government through the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013. It is through that planned implementation of this provision that we have learnt that it is simply disproportionate.
Before I go into more detail, I reassure noble Lords that this does not mean that firms will be under no obligation to report wrongdoing to the regulators. First, a separate proviso in the 2013 Act will still apply: the requirement for firms to notify regulators that they have taken disciplinary action against an individual subject to the conduct rules, be it through dismissal, a reduction in pay or a written warning. Secondly, this requirement builds on the regulators’ existing principle for business that firms must tell them of anything that may be of interest to them. If a significant issue arose with the conduct of a member of staff that for some reason did not lead to disciplinary action, the firm would still need to consider whether it would be appropriate to alert the regulators.
In this context, the Government believe that a blanket requirement to report all known or suspected breaches of the conduct rules is disproportionate. In particular, an obligation to report suspected breaches is potentially open-ended and wide ranging for it forces firms to work out the point at which possible indications of breaches of rules of conduct would
amount to a genuine suspicion. Then the firm would have to train staff to spot and assess those indications, and finally firms would need systems—