My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, for her thoughts and for raising the ante to talk about a slightly more dynamic form of impact assessment.
I thank my noble friend Lord Trenchard for the very example that is now the subject of debate. I think the point that he was making, which I would support, is that impact assessments can reduce the perverse effects of such measures. We know—it is a matter of record, I think—that the number of analysts, especially small analysts, has gone down as a result of the MiFID legislation. An impact assessment on how it was enforced, whether its origin was in the brain of the UK or of the EU, could have been helpful. Of course, that is what my amendment is all about.
I was glad to have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for working up a decent impact assessment model. I share his tribute to public servants, having been one a long time ago, and the work of bodies that produce evidence for things, such as the Low Pay Commission and social trends, and the MPC in our own sector of financial services. Better scrutiny would take place with better impact assessment. It is why, regarding proposed new subsection (3) which Amendment 103 would insert, I talked about both the existing position and other options, because I agree with the noble Lord that it is much better if you can look at several options when developing difficult policies. I agree that pre-legislative scrutiny can sometimes be very useful.
My noble friend Lady Noakes reminded us, rightly, of the lack of impact assessment on the various Covid measures. I thank her particularly for the suggestion that the quality of consultation by the FCA, the PRA or the Government and of impact assessment should be added to any review.
I was glad to hear noble Lords build on what an impact assessment system should look like, including the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer—I echo her concerns about accountability—and the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. There is a feeling that it is important to have a decent system.
My noble friend the Deputy Leader explained, as I had already anticipated in my own remarks, that a system does exist: both for government regulation and regulation by the two regulators, and for cost-benefit analysis to be produced. What I am not clear about is whether that is fit for purpose. It is very difficult to find out what the requirements are and to read all the various bits of paper. This is why I tabled the amendment, so that we could have an intelligent debate. Even if noble Lords do not want to go along with
Amendment 103, we should make an effort, with the dissemination of the Bill, to ensure that the requirements are better understood.
That means that Amendment 104 is perhaps more important, because it asks that we review regularly what is being done in the way of cost-benefit and impact assessment, and how the objectives set out are achieved. I suggested some objectives in Amendment 104; others will no doubt be concerned about other objectives of the regulators. As we have said on earlier amendments, competition is not really the same as competitiveness. I was also keen to throw in small business—for reasons that my noble friend knows very well—and innovation, because of their value.
With this Bill, we need to satisfy ourselves that the new framework satisfactorily replaces, indeed, improves on, what went before. I take the point—the Chancellor is right—that we now have the chance to do the right thing in the UK, and to do it better than was done under the auspices of the EU. I may come back to this on Report, because a simple well-understood system of impact assessment, and of annual review in some form, would boost scrutiny and transparency, which has been a key theme of the Bill, as well as the governance of our largest and most important economic sector. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.