My Lords, I wanted to provide some examples of the kind of questions which the supervisory board might raise. For example, it could ask the FCA/PRA executive board to explain the delay in securing compensation for the victims of the HBOS and RBS frauds—that could be one question; I shall give a few more examples. It could ask why no one at the board level of HBOS and RBS has so far been prosecuted or why HSBC took 20 hours to respond to calls on its fraud helpline—which is of concern to many people. It could ask whether it was appropriate for the FCA to commission Section 166 reports from organisations involved in antisocial practices, or what progress the FCA had made in dealing with the issues relating to banks forging customers’ signatures. It could ask what policies were being developed to deal with global warming—which, again, is of interest to many people. It could ask what the regulators were doing to protect people from predatory lending practices—payday lending problems have not gone away, as we all know—or to protect businesses, especially small businesses, from excessive charges by credit card companies. It could ask what the PRA was doing to address the shortcomings of the Basel III recommendations. Lastly, as we all know that a remit of the FCA is to promote competition in respect of financial services, the supervisory board could ask how the FCA would do that given that many towns now lack bank branches.
These kinds of probing questions do not interfere with the day-to-day running, but they provide oversight and they push back against regulatory silence and capture. A supervisory board will erode the space for regulators to sweep things under their dusty carpets. It can transform our country and ensure that regulators work to protect the people and address their concerns.
Ministers often say that regulators are there to serve the people, so what objections can there be to empowering people to sit on the supervisory boards and democratise the regulatory structures and our society? Empowering people has a much lower cost than that associated with scandals and financial crisis.
I beg to move the amendment.