House of Lords
Tuesday, 26 June 2012.
2.30 pm
Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Birmingham.
Introduction: Baroness Kidron
2.37 pm
Beeban Tania Kidron OBE, having been created Baroness Kidron, of Angel in the London Borough of Islington, was introduced and made the solemn affirmation, supported by Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws and Lord Laming, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.
NHS: Dental Care
Question
2.42 pm
Asked By Baroness Gardner of Parkes
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many dentists are now providing NHS dental care under the general dental services contract introduced in 2006; and what is the annual cost of the care provided and the amount generated in patient charge revenues towards funding this care.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe): My Lords, the latest figures published by the NHS information centre show that 22,799 dentists provided NHS primary dental care in 2010-11. The net allocation for primary dental care in 2010-11, the latest year for which figures are available, was £2,200 million. Patient charge revenue for 2010-11 was £617 million.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: It is good to have the updated figures, but is the Minister aware that the two major concerns for patients now are transparency and availability? Availability is something that we look to the health service to provide. However, the transparency issue has become very important, not only to patients but to other dentists, who are very dissatisfied that dentists are able to put up notices saying, “National Health Service treatment available”, yet after a patient goes to them it emerges that the treatment is very limited. Does the Minister not think that, in the interests of warning the consumer, the present NHS fee charts should show that conditions may apply?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend about the importance of transparency of information for NHS patients. NHS Choices, which is the department’s public-facing website, already displays a lot of information about fees, the treatment that should be received and how to make a complaint about NHS dentistry, but more work is being done in
this area to improve information on patients’ ratings of different practices, and we are updating the patient leaflet as well. What a dentist should not do is mislead a patient or induce a patient to access the surgery and then not provide the treatment that the patient thought they were going to get. If they cannot provide NHS treatment for whatever reason, they should point the patient in the direction of a practice that can, or else refer him or her to the primary care trust helpline.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I refer the House to my health interests in the register. Following on from the noble Baroness’s Question, can the Minister refer specifically to the OFT report, which showed that thousands of patients, after being told by their dentist that they could not have a certain treatment on the NHS, were persuaded to go private? That is and was inaccurate information. Are the Government going to take action in this area?
Earl Howe: My Lords, the OFT report on the dental market was published last month and we very much welcome that study. We note that it found that the vast majority of patients were happy with their dental treatment and that the vast majority of dentists behave ethically. There should be, and are, clear penalties for the small minority who mislead patients, but the noble Lord is right to draw attention to that aspect of the OFT report. It is an area that we are taking extremely seriously and we are looking at what more we can do.
Lord Colwyn: In view of the Minister’s comments on patient charge revenues and the fact that NHS dentists are not allowed to do competitive pricing, has he any idea why the recent OFT report to which he has just referred revealed that 1% of regular NHS patients chose their dentist because, they said, the practice had competitive prices? Why do his colleagues at the department still refer to the NHS as being free at the point of delivery?
Earl Howe: My Lords, my noble friend is correct. Treatment provided on the NHS carries only one pricing tariff, which cannot be varied. The OFT report found that only 1% of NHS patients and 2% of private patients chose a dentist on the basis of price. I stand to be corrected, but I do not believe that it made any suggestion that NHS charges were uncompetitive; they are, and always have been, a subsidised contribution to NHS costs—they are not a market price. Therefore, I imagine that the OFT report reflected the fact that patients were comparing private charges with NHS charges. Of course, the NHS is in general free at the point of use, but my noble friend is right. It is important that we are clear that some charges exist, as they have in dentistry for 60 years.
Baroness Jolly: My Lords, some may avoid the dentist because they cannot find one, others for fear of high costs, and others just for fear. Have the Government carried out any work to determine what proportion of the population does not attend a dentist, and the reason why?
Earl Howe: I am pleased to tell my noble friend that since May 2010 over 1.1 million more patients have been seen by an NHS dentist, which is very good news. Nevertheless, we are clear that access is a priority—56.6% of the population has seen an NHS dentist within the past two years. We wish to design the new dental contract, which is currently being piloted, in a way that encourages access.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree: My Lords, does my noble friend recall that last month he told the House that he was giving attention to the possibility of access online to dental prices. Has he anything to report since he said that?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I referred earlier to NHS Choices, the website that patients and the public can access. It contains the most up-to-date information on dental treatment costs and entitlements. The dental section of NHS Choices was updated at the end of February following suggestions and comments submitted by the public through the website itself and these changes include new pages that clearly explain dental charges and exemptions and inform patients how to get help with dental costs.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, am I right in my understanding that children and young people get all NHS dental treatment free of charge? If so, what improvements have there been in dental health among this group?
Earl Howe:The noble Countess is quite right. The oral health of children, particularly those from disadvantaged families, is one of the biggest challenges we have and one of the main priorities in this policy area. While two-thirds of five year-olds are now caries free, the remaining one-third have an average of 3.45 decayed, missing or filled teeth. We are piloting new ways of supporting dentists to identify children at risk of tooth decay to get them the care and preventive advice they need, including engagement through schools, the wider community and local authorities.
Rio+20 Conference
Question
2.51 pm
Asked By Lord Stern of Brentford
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the outcomes at the recent Rio+20 conference and the contribution made by the United Kingdom Government.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Taylor of Holbeach): My Lords, the Rio+20 conference made clear that the green economy is essential for poverty eradication and sustainable development. It sets out a green economy vision and has agreed some specific steps that countries can take to implement this. These include agreement to develop sustainable development
goals and indicators to complement GDP, and to advance corporate sustainability reporting. We approached Rio+20 with ambition and engaged constructively with our international partners, and we will continue to do this as we focus on implementation.
Lord Stern of Brentford: I thank the Minister for his Answer. I certainly welcome the Rio commitment to develop sustainable development goals and the Prime Minister’s involvement in that work. However, does the Minister agree that the facts indicate that now is the time for strong action if we are to avoid severe threats to the lives and livelihoods of future generations, particularly of the poorest among them? Does he also agree that the paucity of specific commitments, credible action plans and funding make Rio+20 deeply disappointing? Will he therefore agree that now is the time to change the debate by providing clear and strong examples of action to achieve results and that of particular importance is the implementation of sustainable energy for all by bringing sustainable power to the approximately 1.5 billion people with no access to electricity? Will the UK Government therefore work directly and strongly to support countries with viable plans for the delivery of sustainable energy for all?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: The noble Lord has a great deal of knowledge in this area and I am very sorry that his indisposition meant that he could not chair one of the key committees at the conference. I agree that some of the outcomes are not as strong as we might have hoped. However, we must view this agreement in context. More than 190 countries have signed up to a political declaration and it is on the foundation of that declaration that the detailed work will then go forward. This country went to Rio+20 with a number of proposals that were welcomed by that conference.
Lord Clark of Windermere: My Lords, in view of the fact that one of the greatest single sources of global emissions is deforestation, and yet timber is one of the few tangible assets of some poor countries, will the Minister tell the House what specific agreement we made at Rio to try to tackle this very important issue?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: I agree with the noble Lord that this is important. We wanted to impress on the conference that GDP was a rather inadequate measure of the resources of a country, and that we want to develop indicators of natural and social capital to complement GDP and agreement to incorporate these into national accounts. All nations at Rio+20 recognise the importance of a broader measure of progress to complement GDP in order to inform decision-making. Forestry is a key element of natural capital, and the UN Statistical Commission will take this work forward.
Lord Teverson: My Lords, corporate business is more and more important to the way the world develops. One of my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister’s targets was to get corporates to report much more on carbon emissions and wider environmental
issues. I congratulate the Government on deciding to do that here in the UK, but what other nations are following our lead and how does the Minister see this developing in the future?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: I am delighted that the Deputy Prime Minister was able to make this declaration on greenhouse gas reporting at Rio. I can report back that the UK was key in this particular area and that this particular development was widely welcomed. Indeed, the decision was cheered by the conference. At Rio, we talked to Aviva and Unilever—companies that have developed exactly this sort of approach to corporate responsibility—and hope that this model will be taken up by other companies.
Lord Judd: My Lords, will the Minister take time to reflect on the answer he has given? I suggest, if I may, that he will find it very complacent. Climate change is the largest threat to the global community, notwithstanding our financial difficulties, which are obviously acute. Does the Minister agree that we must take urgent action on migration, world poverty and food availability for the world population? What happened at Rio is a disgrace. We should learn from the financial crisis that we suffer grievously if we do not take action in time. Why have we not taken and agreed specific action at Rio?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: The noble Lord makes a passionate contribution to the discussion. Underlying it, of course, is the question of Britain’s role. This is a gathering of the world’s nations, with a huge disparity between the wealth and economic activity of the participating countries. Getting a single agreement is bound to be difficult. It is important that we have laid the foundations for discussions in the future that can lead to exactly the sort of outcomes that the noble Lord seeks, but it would be presumptive of this country or Parliament to go to an international conference and insist that it had the solutions to the world’s problems. We are part and parcel of a global solution, and that is what we seek to maintain.
Lord Knight of Weymouth: My Lords, the Rio agreement 20 years ago was a landmark agreement. As a result, we had Local Agenda 21, and “thinking global, acting local” entered our consciousness. By contrast, this agreement is a let-down. What does the Minister think this treaty will be remembered for in a month’s time, let alone in 20 years’ time? Given that the Prime Minister is co-chairing a process for following up the millennium development goals, in the light of a lack of progress at Rio what hope does the Minister have for the Prime Minister’s success?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: I certainly have a great deal more hope than is evidenced by the noble Lord’s question. I do not see this as a failure. As I said right at the beginning in my Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Stern, this has the potential to build the foundations for a durable and sustainable global green economy. The Prime Minister is, through the United Nations,
chairing his committee and working in parallel with the millennium development goals, and I am satisfied that he will achieve the outcome that he desires.
Child Poverty
Question
2.59 pm
Asked By Baroness Massey of Darwen
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they will respond to UNICEF’s recent report on international comparable data on child deprivation and relative child poverty.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud): My Lords, we welcome this contribution to the debate on child poverty. As UNICEF notes, although income matters, eradicating child poverty is about more than income. This Government are investing to tackle the root causes of poverty. In particular, we are improving early intervention, reforming education and, through the universal credit, making work pay. This approach is fundamental to our strategy for tackling child poverty, and we are pleased that UNICEF’s conclusions support this.
Baroness Massey of Darwen: I thank the Minister for that reply. However, first, will he acknowledge that since 1990 a great deal has been achieved in addressing child poverty and deprivation; secondly, can he guarantee that these trends will continue, given the Government’s policies on welfare; and, thirdly, will he support regular reporting back to Parliament on this important issue?
Lord Freud: My Lords, the level of child poverty has come down since 1998 but the cost has been very high. More worryingly, we are now the second-highest spender on transfers to children and families, spending 3.6% of GNP on it—the figure for France being 3.8%—but we simply do not get enough for our money. We are way down the ranking and that is why we need a new approach. I cannot think of a single reason why quarterly reporting would help that but we are clearly committed to reducing child poverty. We are committed to the targets for 2020 and we need to find new ways of achieving them.
Lord Chidgey: As a prelude to the Minister’s consultation with UNICEF, which I think is planned for the autumn, how will the Government explain their plans to address the multidimensional nature of child poverty?
Lord Freud: My Lords, one thing on which there has not been enough focus is the importance of behavioural impacts. Income transfers have their place in tackling poverty but they are simply not enough. Behavioural changes are required, and one thing about universal credit is that it brings a change in work incentives, as well as some very precisely targeted income transfers. Vocational education and apprenticeships in
this country have just not been adequate, and we have not looked after vulnerable groups—I am thinking of those leaving care and prisoners leaving prison. We need a large number of strategies to tackle this very difficult problem.
The Earl of Listowel: Education is the key route out of poverty. Will the Minister encourage his colleagues to look still more closely at the Finnish education system, where 20 candidates compete for each teacher training place, where every teacher, whether in primary or secondary school, has a masters qualification and where excellent results are achieved in numeracy, literacy and science? With regard to young people in care, will he consider again looking at the continent, where he will see how much more qualified the staff in children’s homes are compared with those in our country? Surely these are the children most at risk of poverty. Their carers and the people around them should have a high level of qualifications—ones that they can aspire to themselves.
Lord Freud: Yes, my Lords, this is an important point. We have a different approach from many of our continental peers. Looking at the figures, we do not seem to be doing well enough in some of these areas. When there are people who need real support, we need to look more closely at the education of the workforce.
Baroness Sherlock: If the UK is second in transferring money to help children, I personally am rather proud of that. If the Minister does not want to focus on income transfers, will he take this opportunity to reassure the House that when his universal credit comes in he will carry on supplying free school meals to children?
Lord Freud: Let me make clear why I do not think it is good enough. We are second as regards the number of income transfers—that comes out in the UNICEF report—but we are 22nd out of 35 countries as regards relative child poverty. That shows that we are just not getting value for our money. I can say that we are making arrangements to ensure that school meals continue in basically the same way, although longer term I am looking to try to incorporate that in the universal credit even more tightly and to make some improvements.
Baroness Deech: My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is widespread scepticism about relative poverty tables because no matter how much money is transferred to children, relatively there will always be others who have less? It is widely thought that one of the safeguards against poverty is having two parents who stay together, preferably with one of them in work.
Lord Freud: My Lords, there is a lot of debate about how to measure poverty. I believe that relative income measures have an important place, as do absolute measures, but it is quite true that we need to have strategies that go to the fundamentals that create
poverty rather than worrying about trying to ameliorate those by income transfers. It is more important to have a balanced strategy.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, why do the Government refuse to extend the pupil premium to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children who are the worst achievers in all sectors of education, whether measured by achievement, attendance or exclusions? Surely that group qualifies as being the most deprived of all in our schools.
Lord Freud: My Lords, I will pass that view on to the Department of Education.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, as we have heard from the Minister, universal credit was supposed to be the last word in welfare reform and the route to tackling worklessness and child poverty. It is clear from recent information that it seems to be behind schedule and heading for being overbudget. Is that the reason for the Prime Minister’s latest foray into welfare reform? There are 17 ideas, which are apparently his and some of which he said could be implemented before the next election if he gained the support of his Liberal Democrat coalition partners. On which of the 17 ideas in particular is he trying to get the agreement of his coalition partners? Do they include removing access to housing benefit and the change in the link with inflation?
Lord Freud: I am really pleased to take this opportunity to reply and to tell noble Lords that universal credit is on time and on budget. The Prime Minister is looking at how to pull the welfare system into the future by asking some fundamental questions that we all need to think about.
Afghanistan: Women’s Rights and the Education of Girls
Question
3.07 pm
Asked By Baroness Williams of Crosby
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will propose at the forthcoming Tokyo conference on support for Afghanistan that at least 25% of aid should be directed to the support of women’s rights and the education of girls.
Baroness Northover: My Lords, at the Tokyo conference in July we will be working to ensure that Afghanistan and its international partners reaffirm their commitments to the rights of Afghan women and children, as enshrined in the Afghan constitution. We wish to see long-term financial commitments from the international community in Tokyo matched by promises from the Afghan Government to deliver key services and policy reforms,
including in the areas of human rights and equal status and opportunity for women. The Tokyo conference is not, however, the forum for detailed spending priorities.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: I thank my noble friend for that Answer. The Tokyo conference is the last occasion, and the best occasion, to try to change the attitude of the Afghan Government towards their handling of what is called the transformational period, the period that follows the removal of ISAF from Afghanistan next year. In the past few weeks we have had very troubling evidence of backsliding on women’s rights, including the poisoning of 120 schoolgirls for daring to attend school. All 120 of them are now in hospital.
Given all that, I ask the Government for two promises. First, will they insist that some part of the aid provided by this country—the $110 million we have committed to Afghanistan—should be devoted to the education, training and advancement of women as a condition of our aid being supplied? Secondly, there should be a transparent account of how that money is spent so that the Afghan Government cannot again escape their responsibilities in the way that, frankly, they have done all too often over the past couple of years.
Baroness Northover: My Lords, my noble friend is quite right that the position of women in Afghanistan is not at all as we would wish it to be. They have made a lot of progress, and we must make sure that we secure that progress and continue to make progress. As far as the UK Government are concerned, the way that DfID approaches its support for Afghanistan is underpinned by human rights, and women’s rights are part of human rights. That will continue to be the case into the future. As we look at the transformational decade that my noble friend referred to, that approach will continue as far as international donors are concerned. The protection of women’s rights is written into the Afghan constitution, and that is what is going to be expected of the Afghan Government.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead: My Lords, does the noble Baroness recall that 10 years ago it was, in fact, the plight of women in Afghanistan that captured our attention and our support? Is she aware that religious leaders, with tacit agreement from President Karzai, are now justifying certain types of domestic violence? They are proposing limits on women’s education and employment and calling for the compulsory wearing of the hijab. Against this background, will the United Kingdom Government undertake to ensure that any peace settlement contains specific and unconditional provision for protecting and promoting the rights and freedoms of women and girls in Afghanistan?
Baroness Northover: This Parliament, like many others, has done a huge amount to highlight the position of women in Afghanistan, and the noble Baroness is quite right that over the past decade or so that has been a focus here. That will continue to be the case. As the noble Baroness knows, Afghanistan is an extremely poor country— it is one of the poorest in the world—and it will continue to rely on donor
support. That donor support insists on the adherence to the principles of Bonn, Chicago and Tokyo in commitment to human rights, and women’s rights are part of that.
Baroness Afshar: Would it be possible to ask the Afghan Government to act according to their Islamic teaching, which demands, as a matter of duty, the provision of education for women, so that they cannot get away with that under the pretence of it being Islamic?
Baroness Northover: I point out to the noble Baroness that 39% of the children attending school at the moment are girls, and that figure is up from virtually none in 2001. The donor commitment to Afghanistan will continue, and it is contingent upon recognition and respect for human rights and the rights of women.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: The Minister spoke about the underpinning of the British Government’s commitment to the rights of girls and women in Afghanistan but the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, asked a much more specific question about aid. It is not a matter of detail, as the noble Baroness implied in her first Answer. Will the Government undertake to ensure that 25% of our aid is earmarked for the rights of women and the education of girls? I thought that the point raised by the noble Baroness was not really answered by the Minister, and I hope she will now address that very specific point.
Baroness Northover: As I said before, the Tokyo conference is about the principles of taking this forward. The principles include respect for human rights, which includes education and the rights of women and girls. DfID mainstreams that through what it does. It therefore follows that the aid that DfID gives has that element built in. The specific request from my noble friend Lady Williams about ring-fencing a particular part is not necessary when you consider the principles and the fact that they are underpinned by a commitment to human rights, education and so on. I think that answers the noble Baroness’s question. The details of how that is done will be addressed down the line once the principles are established. The principles are key in the first instance.
Social Care Portability Bill [HL]
First Reading
3.14 pm
A Bill to make provision for the portability of care packages to promote independent living for disabled persons by local authorities in England and Wales, and for connected purposes.
The Bill was introduced by Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, read a first time and ordered to be printed.
Administration and Works Committee
Membership Motion
3.14 pm
Moved By The Chairman of Committees
That Lord McAvoy be appointed a member of the Select Committee in place of Lord Bassam of Brighton, resigned.
Public Bodies (Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission: Abolition and Transfer of Functions) Order 2012
Social Security (Civil Penalties) Regulations 2012
Motions to Refer to Grand Committee
3.14 pm
That the draft order and regulations be referred to a Grand Committee.
Financial Services Bill
Financial Services Bill 4th Report from the Delegated Powers Committee
Committee (1st Day)
3.15 pm
Relevant document: 4th Report from the Delegated Powers Committee.
That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I notice that the Chief Whip is in her place, so when will we who propose to spend quite a lot of time on the Bill and make serious contributions be told of the days on which we will be sitting, and how many days we will be sitting, before the House rises? It would enable some of us at least to get something resembling a life.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon): My Lords, the Forthcoming Business will be issued in the normal manner following discussions through the usual channels.
1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
In section 1 of the Bank of England Act 1998 (court of directors), for subsection (1) substitute—
“(1) The court of directors of the Bank shall be replaced with a Supervisory Board.””
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 2 and 201. Before addressing the amendments, I crave the indulgence of the Committee in making a few general comments on the Bill and our procedures.
This is a very important Bill. Yet, as we know, it is a dog’s breakfast of amendments to earlier legislation and is, accordingly, extraordinarily and disproportionately difficult for the House to assess properly. The Treasury Committee of the other place has objected to the current construction and argues that there should be a new Bill to replace earlier legislation. Only then can that committee and, indeed, the regulated community gain a proper overview of the full import of the measures before us.
Most importantly, the Bill as currently drafted severely limits effective scrutiny by this Committee. Not only is there the question of excessive complexity in drafting but many of the most important debates on Bills take place on the Motion that Clause “X” stand part of the Bill. As this Bill is constructed, this is just about impossible, as failure to agree, say, that Clause 3 or Clause 5 stand part would not only wreck the entire Bill but render it completely meaningless by taking about 40 pages out of it. The drafting is a mess.
Secondly, there are fundamental problems with the overall structure of the Bill, identified by the Joint Committee and the Treasury Committee, which could better be addressed by proper redrafting rather than by piecemeal amendment.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, for interrupting at this early stage. I am sympathetic to the point that he has just made, but is not the problem one of standing orders rather than the drafting of the Bill?
Lord Eatwell: I think the answer is no. The issue is the straightforward drafting of the Bill. The problems, as I said, could be better addressed by proper redrafting rather than by piecemeal amendment. For example, the appropriate structure of the governance of the Bank of England in the 21st century, a matter to which the Treasury Committee paid particular interest, should be dealt with by a full rewrite of the Bank of England Act 1998 rather than by the cumbersome and opaque clauses before us.
Thirdly and most importantly, the Treasury Committee of the other place has raised a number of major objections to the content of the Bill with respect not only to Bank of England governance but to a number of other crucial issues of economic management, especially at times of crisis. Before today, few of these had been taken on board by the Government, although we will consider their proposal of an oversight committee later today.
I was delighted to read in the Financial Times yesterday that amendments derived directly from the Treasury Committee’s report of 24 May have been tabled by my noble friend Lord McFall, a distinguished former chair of the Treasury Committee, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, perhaps the most tenacious opposition speaker on Treasury affairs for many a long year—my noble friend Lord Myners has the scars to prove it. Your Lordships’ House has a fundamental responsibility to pass those amendments so that the other place has the opportunity to consider amendments proposed by its own committee. This is a valuable constitutional innovation.
I recognise that a fundamental rewrite of the Bill would take some time, but the Treasury Committee has faced up to this issue, too, arguing that the legislation is proceeding with undue haste. I agree. I recognise that the planning blight that hangs over the FSA is causing problems, but the performance of the shadow committees and authorities has already been such as to give us confidence that delay will not be disproportionately damaging.
All this adds up to the fact that the Bill as drafted is a barrier, not an aid, to effective macroprudential regulation. This is not a party political issue. I say with all due respect that the noble Lord, Lord McFall, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, are not natural political allies. This is about getting the legislation right, which is what we on this side will endeavour to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, and I worked well together to improve the Bill that established the Office for Budgetary Responsibility, and I hope that we can work well together to improve this Bill, although I would not start from here. When the Minister first speaks, I think he owes the Committee an explanation as to why the Government have consistently ignored the advice of the Joint Committee and the Treasury Committee on the structure of this legislation.
I turn—to the relief of the Committee, I am sure—to the amendments in this first group. Their fundamental objective is, I hope, clear: to set in train a wide-ranging restructuring of the governance of the Bank of England. The Bill gives the Bank remarkable new powers in macroprudential and microprudential regulation and in the assessment and management of financial crises. The structure of governance and levels of accountability should be appropriate to these new powers.
A key element in the structure of governance of the Bank is the court. As many commentators have noted, the current constitution of the court, its powers and resources are simply not up to the job. The Treasury Committee has paid particular attention to the role of the court, which is currently responsible for managing the Bank of England’s affairs other than monetary policy. The committee’s evidence sessions have exposed doubts, expressed by many witnesses, as to the court’s fitness for purpose as presently structured. A distinguished former member of the Monetary Policy Committee, in evidence to the Treasury Committee, described the court as,
“an historical legacy institution that now serves no useful purpose and creates the appearance or illusion of accountability or oversight where none exist”.
These concerns are especially important because of the role that the Financial Services Bill, as currently drafted, envisages for the court with respect to determining the UK’s financial stability strategy. In the context of monetary policy, where the Bank of England’s objective is to maintain price stability HM Treasury is required to write to the Monetary Policy Committee at least once a year to specify price stability and the Government’s economic policy. The annual Treasury remit letter fleshes out the concept of price stability in practical operational terms while avoiding undue rigidity. It strikes a balance between operational independence and democratic accountability.
A quite different model is proposed for financial stability. It is envisaged that the primary responsibility for determining and keeping under review the strategy for achieving the financial stability objective will reside with the court, although the court will be required to consult the Financial Policy Committee and the Treasury, and the Financial Policy Committee can, at times, make recommendations.
However, here we have a crucial difference in views—given the court’s role in determining the financial stability objective—on whether the court is up to the job. The view that the court should be abolished and replaced by a supervisory board was advanced by the Treasury Committee. In the face of the powerful arguments advanced by the Treasury Committee, the Government replied that they were not,
“at this time, minded to pursue the more radical changes to Bank of England governance recommended by the TSC, including the replacement of Court with a supervisory board. In general, the Government considers that the governance of the Bank should primarily be a matter for the Bank itself”.
This is astonishing. Indeed, it is nonsensical. As the Treasury Committee points out, the Government are the sole shareholder of the Bank, and many of the Bank’s responsibilities, functions and powers are defined by legislation. The Government do not regard the governance of private sector companies as a matter just for those companies. They really cannot wash their hands of this central issue.
Finally, the Bill grants major new powers to the person of the governor. It is important that the governor is backed up by a powerful supervisory committee to which he is accountable and is not an individual exposed on his or her own, so why a supervisory board? What is in a name? The whole point of this proposal is to recognise this necessary break with the past if we are to have a modern, effective structure of governance at the Bank of England. In the convoluted context of amendments to this Bill, we have been able to present only a sketch of what we on this side of the House have in mind, but we shall return to the matter on Report.
By accepting this amendment, the Government would acknowledge that the new Bank, with its new powers, would have a board to whom the executive is responsible and that is capable of performing an effective supervisory function. That should be its job: to supervise, to set strategy, to advise and review, not to run the Bank on a day-to-day basis and certainly not in the context of a crisis. These amendments are a signpost towards the new Bank with a new regulatory structure, and hence towards a truly effective regulatory system. I beg to move.
Lord Peston: I rise to support my noble friend. This is an immensely complicated Bill, and I certainly find it virtually impossible to follow. I cannot tell you how many hours I have put in trying to find out what almost any sentence actually refers to when it refers to some other sentence in the Bill. It contains clauses, subsections, paragraphs—I think I could find an infinite regress in there somewhere that went on for ever.
3.30 pm
I am sure, given the earlier intervention, that that is exactly what parliamentary draftsmen like getting up to. Unfortunately, none of us is a parliamentary draftsman;
we are simply ordinary Members of the House of Lords trying to do our duty by scrutinising a Bill. To give some examples, all manner of things in the Bill are referred to on one page and then not defined until a great many pages later. Some of those are acronyms, which makes it even harder for those of us who are not good at this sort of thing to find where that acronym is converted into ordinary English. To take just two examples, the financial stability objective and the financial stability strategy are both mentioned on page 2, but you go through page after page before you find anything resembling a definition, let alone an interpretation of what they might mean. The FCA itself is mentioned on page 3 but is defined on page 15. I should have thought that many a Member of your Lordships’ House would decide to give up on the Bill altogether before getting to page 15, because there must be better things one can do here to make a contribution.
That is one general question. I am also concerned—this is the last of my general remarks—about the Government marching in with an enormously complicated amendment, such as one that is tabled to be discussed today. We have had it for, what, three days? We are meant somehow to scrutinise that amendment. When we do all that, we are justifying the continued existence of your Lordships’ House. We are meant to do that today. How we can manage to do that successfully is beyond me. I have gone through it several times and until I hear the Minister I doubt if I will even understand what the Government think that they are up to, let alone be able to criticise him for it.
My main remark, however, concerns the amendment. In A New Approach to Financial Regulation, the Government state, in terms, that they intend to place the Bank of England,
“at the heart of the financial system”.
The obvious response to that is: why? On the basis of the Bank of England’s performance from 2008 to the present day, the idea that anyone in their right mind would give it more power rather than query what it is up to altogether is completely beyond me. Can the Minister tell us why that group of people, who have bungled everything since the original crisis hit our system, should be given more power? When the economic history of our time is written, it will say that the Government must be crackers. That goes much further than my noble friend wants to, because he has Front-Bench responsibilities, but I am totally at a loss as to why those people should be given more power, given how they have failed in the past.
That is the basis of my remarks. If the Government are determined to go ahead with placing the Bank of England at the centre, we need to find some way to defend our financial institutions, many of which make enormously profitable contributions to our economy, from the damage that might be done to them by a lot of those people, who can at best be described as incompetent.
Lord Flight: My Lords, I am unclear as to what are the Government’s proposals, the Opposition’s proposals and even the Treasury Select Committee’s proposals. It strikes me that a great deal of complexity is made out of a situation which should be extremely
straightforward. The Bank of England should have a board of directors—you can call it the court, if you like—composed of proper individuals independent of the Bank of England who have substantial experience in the financial services industry and who have all the powers of a board.
I am a commissioner of a minor regulator, the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, and we operate as a board controlled by non-executives to which the executive regulator is accountable and where the board has the power to fire the chief executive and the requirement to understand and be on top of every regulatory issue that is in the course of being addressed. I cannot see why the Bank of England should not have a board of that nature. Indeed, the court has a lot of the powers required to exercise that role. It is just that it has not done so for many years and has been an ornament.
We then have the question of what the FPC should do. Some have said that it will take over as the board that runs the Bank of England. However, it seems to me that the FPC should be a specialist body which focuses on the fundamental issue of what is going on in the banking industry and advises the board on financial stability; it should not be a substitute for or take over from a proper board of the Bank of England which covers all the issues. However, if there is a specialist body and a proper board in this structure, I cannot see what is wrong with it.
I also have to agree that, certainly between 2007 and 2008, the Bank of England did not exactly do very well. Much to my chagrin, it was really the ECB that managed to keep the banks and the City of London afloat, since the Bank of England, extraordinarily, did not recognise a major run on the banking system that was far greater than the one in 1974, which I also lived through. My reply on that point is that these bodies need to contain a majority of independent people. If the board or the FPC is not controlled by independents, then they will be in the control of the governor. Both bodies need independent people who can stand up to the establishment of the Bank of England.
I look forward to learning from the Minister precisely what the amendments mean. Solving the situation should not be particularly difficult but is actually a matter of common sense.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, I, too, share the nervousness of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, about the governance of the Bank of England, and I agree that the Bill is extremely complicated. I take my hat off to those who have worked hard on the Joint Committee. Their task was very much harder than the one that the noble Lord and I had—under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, who is in his place—when we scrutinised the then Financial Services and Markets Bill some 12 or 13 years ago. This task is clearly much more difficult given that it does not attempt a total rewrite of that legislation. Although I am not sure whether the PRA or the FCA will be the continuing entity of the FSA, as I understand that two-thirds of the FSA personnel will be moving to the FCA, I believe that for most purposes the PRA will nevertheless be the continuing entity.
Although I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has moved his amendment, I am afraid that I am unable to support it. Like my noble friend Lord Flight, I believe that the situation is quite simple: the Bank of England has a perfectly good Court of Directors—a term which I think sounds rather good. Some of your Lordships may think that it sounds arcane and fusty but, on the other hand, it has a certain amount of gravitas. To change it to “supervisory board” would be very un-British. In my business life, I have come across many supervisory boards, in Holland and in Germany. In many cases, I find them semi-detached, rather remote and rather nervous to exercise their powers. If we were to adopt the term “supervisory board” it would give a weak impression—much weaker than the rather heavy-sounding Court of Directors gives. I do not think that there is no problem with the court’s name. However, I agree that its accountability needs to be strengthened, given the additional powers that the Bank will receive. Certainly, some changes need to be made to the governance of the Court of the Bank of England.
The noble Lord also referred to the asymmetry between the Monetary Policy Committee and the proposed Financial Stability Committee, in that the first is independent of the court, whereas the new Financial Stability Committee would be subordinate to the court. I do not think it necessary, in this connection, to strive for total symmetry, because the Monetary Policy Committee has a very specific responsibility, to set interest rates, which is a technical matter. It is essential that it continues to conduct its business in a transparent and independent way and to be composed of persons who are able to provide technical expertise in determining interest rates. The Financial Stability Committee will have a much broader remit. Regarding the oversight of our prudential regulation, both macro and micro, I do not quite understand why it is necessary that the two be so separated; it makes the structure more complicated than it need be. So I have sympathy with the noble Lord’s purpose, but I cannot agree that to replace the court with a supervisory board would be the right way to go.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, what we have heard so far exposes to me why, as I have said before, this is a non-party political Bill. I agree with everything that has been said so far. The noble Lord, Lord Flight, was very good. The way that this Bill is being managed is not the Minister’s fault—we should not have had a Bill in the first place. What an amount of paperwork; we are supposed to be becoming a world without paper, but I have left huge volumes of advisory papers behind in the office. I also have with me the Bill itself, of course, and various other documents. The management of this, as my noble friend said, has been outrageous. A few days ago we had four pages—as if the Bill and the amendments were not enough to read—of government amendments. Those were, I think, on page 3 of the paper. We have to read those as well as find out what all the committees, sub-committees, courts and directors, and God knows what else, are going to do. They are all going to be responsible for matters which, at the end of the day, the Chancellor will never give up. Indeed, we are told that the Treasury will be very involved with the various committees. We will come to that later.
For the moment, however, I would like the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, to tell us why we removed the FSA. My understanding at the time of the Bank of England Bill was that Gordon Brown took away the FSA from the Bank of England precisely because he did not want to make the Bank as powerful as this legislation now proposes making it. Those powers are now much wider—the court of the Bank is being given much greater powers as well as various committees and sub-committees. The Bill proposes all sorts of things that we are supposed to understand. Frankly, I do not understand them. Will the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, be able to explain the Bill rather than just read out his briefs? Perhaps he should send his briefs to us; that might be easier than listening to what they say. The whole thing is so complex. The powers of the Bank of England are now so huge that I assume that the Treasury and the Chancellor will never allow them to be used. Members of the Treasury itself are on various committees of the Bank. I do not know who is going to be responsible anywhere.
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I entirely agree with my noble friend, and I hope the House can understand why I personally voted for the Bill to go into Grand Committee—it needs detailed scrutiny. Indeed, it needs separating; the whole Bill needs breaking up into something smaller. That could be done only if we had sensible discussions in the Moses Room, which would have been much better. We used to have very good discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, over the budget responsibility Bill, and I for one am desperately sorry that we are having to take this all on the Floor of the House now. I agree with all that has been said, and I certainly agree with the amendment that was so well moved by my noble friend Lord Eatwell.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I would like to make one comment on the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, and then make some comments on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Peston. On the way in which the amendment is drafted, I am not at all clear about how the notion of a supervisory committee fits with the language of new Section 9B of the Bank of England Act 1998 in Clause 3(1), which talks about the Financial Policy Committee being,
“a sub-committee of the court of directors of the Bank”.
I am a very long-in-the-tooth lawyer, and the normal language of sub-committees is to make them clearly subsidiary and subject to not just the oversight but the decision-making of the body of which they are a sub-committee. I put that to the Minister because we have enough confusion in the Bill already and, as has been mentioned, the name “supervisory committee” has many connotations from other jurisdictions that frustrate his desire to make this clearer.
Given that the issue of clarity and comprehensibility has been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, and others, this is probably the only chance I have to add to that and ask my noble friend if he will take profoundly seriously the way in which the Bill is being put to us. I venture to suggest that not one Peer in 50, however learned or experienced they are, will be able to get
their head around these 168 pages. It is not just those pages, of course, since they cross-refer to hundreds and hundreds of other pieces of statutory legislation and instruments.
I hope that my noble friend will take back the undertaking that I thought I got two years ago to the effect that where we had a Bill of this nature with, as I say, constant cross-references, those of us who wanted to get our heads around it would be given the legislation that was amended by the Bill, with the amendments shown on the face of that legislation so that we could relatively quickly—I use the word “relatively” advisedly—get our head around it. I have to tell noble Lords that if they go to the Library and pull down the 1998 statute, they will find that subsequent amendments have not been incorporated into it and they will have to go off elsewhere to find them. The whole thing is totally counterproductive to the work of this House. Most of us have neither secretaries nor research assistants of any sort. It really is scandalous—I use that word—that as legislators we are not assisted as far as possible to do our job effectively.
If the Minister is having sleepless nights, I urge him to look at subsections (1), (4) and (5) in new Section 9B, where the language is so—I nearly used an Anglo-Saxon expression, which would have been much more colourful—hyper-complicated. New Section 9B(1) says that this particular sub-committee is to be called,
“the ‘Financial Policy Committee’”.
However, new Section 9B(4) says,
“The court of directors must keep the procedures followed by the Committee under review”.
Given that the Bill has just said that the way to describe the new sub-committee is as the “Financial Policy Committee”, which committee is meant in subsection (4)? Then new Section 9B(5) says that:
“The court’s function under subsection (4) is to stand delegated to the sub-committee”,
which is not supposed to be referred to as that at all, so perhaps that is another sub-committee that we have not heard of and which is defined 63 pages later. And so it goes on. I do not know about anyone else, but I think that I have spent eight hours so far in trying to understand Clauses 5 and 6. I may be becoming an old f—no, I may be losing my sharpness, but I urge the Minister, not only with this Bill but with so many other Bills that we are called upon to deal with, to make the task for us legislators as readily accessible and easy as possibly can be.
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke: My Lords, I am delighted that cleverer people than me have found this Bill incomprehensible, because I have real fears that we will get very lost in the detail of this Bill, and we will certainly get lost in the alphabet soup of acronyms contained within the Bill. However, I will return to the substantive issue.
The Bank of England is to be the pre-eminent financial services regulator. A regulator has to be transparent, consistent, and readily understood internationally. I would be delighted if, when the Minister replies, he will explain to us why it is necessary to vest such untrammelled power in the Governor of the
Bank of England. The governor becomes much more powerful than the Prime Minister, who is, after all, only primus inter pares. The governor becomes completely unchallengeable. That is why the idea of a supervisory board in the amendment proposed by my noble friend is sensible.
I will not get tied up on titles. The court concept is anachronistic, and it is not readily understood by our main competitors. I am much more interested in the substance of supervision. One of the key elements of the work of the Bank of England as financial regulator will be to insist upon the best kind of corporate governance that we can get in our financial institutions. It should, therefore, be an example in itself in how it is governed. I have no confidence that that level of modern, transparent, corporate governance is in the model that is outlined in this Bill, as I understand it.
If people are tied up with the history of the Bank, which is long and distinguished, we can still have chaps running around in pink coats, and we can still have a wonderful collection of silver. However, at the end of the day, if we, as a nation, are to remain a leader in the financial services industry, we have to have a system of governance of our financial regulator that stands up to very tight scrutiny. I therefore urge the Minister, when he replies to this amendment, to give us some explanation as to why the Government have not come up with a model of corporate governance that gives that kind of confidence.
We will come to other elements when we talk about the role of the governor. I am extremely concerned about a repetition of what happened in the run-up to the run on Northern Rock. Some ill advised, perhaps unintentional, comments by the governor contributed to the run on that bank. We cannot allow ourselves to get into a situation where something like that could happen again.
Lord Stewartby: My Lords, I do not want at any length to add to what many noble Lords have said, except to record that this is one of the most incomprehensible Bills that I have had business with. Several times I started on what I thought was a trail of decisions, and at the end of it I could not work out who did what and how they knew what they should do.
I have one small technical question for my noble friend that is along those lines. I know that “macro” means “long” in Greek. I do not know what is meant by “micro”—which means small—so far as it is applicable to prudential regulation. Is the micro bit about the size of the body being investigated or about the scale of the activities of the regulator? I am not at all clear about this. Having come across these terms “macro” and “micro” regulation, I found myself unable to work out what quite a lot of these fundamental things mean.
Unfortunately, under the old regime there was a lack of clarity about who did what and who was responsible. However, I am not sure that we are getting away from that, as we ought to. It is a difficulty, and I hope that my noble friend can shed a little light on it. Many who have spoken in this short debate have
pointed out that the Bill is not very easy to follow, to put it mildly. I would strongly welcome anything that would make it easier.
Lord McFall of Alcluith: My Lords, this is the most important Bill to have come from the coalition. We are expected to right the wrongs of the financial service and have that in place for the next 20, 30 or 40 years. This Bill has been tacked on to the Financial Services and Markets Act, which is why there is such complexity and why it is wrong. The Governor of the Bank of England himself said in June 2011:
“We are losing the simplicity and the ability to have a cleaner debate about the new framework. Certainly the Government rejected our”—
“request to have a new Bill and the argument that they gave, understandably, was that at the cost of some complexity we could ensure that all the provisions that were appropriate could be put into an amended FSMA and it would be a faster way of doing it”.
He went on, with some understatement:
“I think we have seen the complexity”.
If the comments of noble Lords today are anything to go by, we have not seen anything yet as a result of that. The governor went on:
“I am not quite sure whether we have avoided delay”.
Going back to the crisis of 2007 and 2008, the main issues were complexity, the question of who was in charge and transparency. We are making them worse, rather than better. We are moving from a tripartite system to a quadripartite system. When we ask exactly who is in charge—the deadly question that no one could answer at the time of the financial crisis—it will be equally hard to give a decent answer as a result of this Bill.
That is what is wrong with the Bill. It needs the utmost scrutiny in this Chamber. The other Chamber debated the Bill for 43 hours and 28 minutes. However, the Financial Services and Markets Act was debated for 89 hours and 59 minutes—more than double the time. As a result, the Treasury Committee says, in its frustration, in the first paragraph of its report, that it is now over to the House of Lords to change the Bill. Why does it say that? It says so because Clauses 80 to 103 and Schedules 17 to 21 were not debated due to a lack of time for the programme Motion. We need time for, and simplicity in, the Bill but we are getting complexity. That is the issue that has brought the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and me together. We are very clear: give us that simplicity, not complexity. The audience that is looking at this from outside may then understand that we have the best interests of the financial services and the country at heart, and we may get a decent Bill out of this.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I told the Minister that I would ask him a question but I forgot to ask it. I hope I will be allowed to ask it before he replies. Its origin is in my getting lost in the Bill. I was in the Public Bill Office and pointed to something on the page—a number, a letter and another number—and said, “I cannot find it”. They flicked the pages over and said to me, “What you need is a Keeling schedule”. I had never heard of a Keeling schedule so I rang the Treasury and asked
one of the noble Lord’s assistants what it was. I gather from talking to the Minister earlier that he now knows what it is. I should like him to tell your Lordships’ House what it is and where we can get one, since I gather that it will enable us to find things.
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Lord Burns: My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, that the Bank of England needs a modern and transparent form of governance, the best governance that it can have. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Flight, that the form of governance that is best known in this country and is best practice is a unitary board—a board that consists of a majority of non-executive directors. It also consists of executive directors with a non-executive chairman. The present structure of the court seems to me very close to that. We may not like its name, but in terms of structure, it seems it could very easily be turned into such a body. The issue is not what its name is or even the composition of it; it is to do with the powers that the court has.
It has been mentioned that the court has many of the powers that a normal board would be expected to have. Some of those powers that it does not practise at present are contained in the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, will move later today to do with dealing with issues of oversight of policy in the past and the extent to which that should be done.
I would hope that we could retain the present structure of the court. As I said, whether the name should be changed is a matter of taste, but we should concentrate on the powers of that court and the extent to which the powers that it needs to operate as a normal board are contained in some of the other amendments being put forward. Certainly, as I interpret some of those that we have seen already, it begins to come quite close to what I would expect to be a modern, transparent and very good form of governance.
Lord Sassoon: My Lords, it has been an interesting 45 minutes. I really thought that this group of amendments was going to be, in cricketing terms, a loosener from the opening fast bowler from the Opposition Benches, instead of which I have been faced with a number of bouncers and, I dare say, a couple of wide balls on the way through.
I will not respond to all of what I might term the Second Reading points that have been reiterated. I answered all the substantive points at Second Reading and would refer noble Lords back to those debates. I also will not be tempted into discussing clauses yet to come. In answer to my noble friend Lord Eccles about what “micro” means—
Lord Sassoon: I beg my noble friend’s pardon. I think I was looking at the Annunciator, which was misleading at the time. I rather wished we were already where my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury was, on Clause 9, but sadly I looked down and we were still on Clause 1. We will come to all these points in due course.
I will respond to the comments on the form in which the Bill is presented. Although I explained at Second Reading why we are amending FiSMA rather than giving a wholesale rewrite, it is clearly of some concern to noble Lords and I should address the points as I did at Second Reading. Our approach was widely supported by consultation respondents. It will minimise the extent to which regulated firms and other users of FiSMA have to deal with legislative change. I appreciate that there might have been forms that would have made it easier at the margin for your Lordships’ House, but I think the substantive point here is that we are asking a major UK industry to absorb significant and necessary change and it is certainly the watchword of this Government in all that we do to minimise regulatory and administrative burdens; and we listened to what the industry had to say in response to the consultation.
I also believe that the way in which the board is constructed will allow for more focused parliamentary and stakeholder scrutiny of the key changes to the regime rather than open up a full discussion of everything again. The Government recognise that it is difficult. We have well over 300 pages of the Bill before us, which is precisely why we published a consolidated version of the Financial Services and Markets Act, which at some 650 pages was a huge exercise by Treasury officials. It took an enormous amount of time and is available on the Treasury website. I drew noble Lords’ attention to it at Second Reading. A comprehensive amended version, as it would be amended if this Bill goes through, is available for scrutiny on the Treasury website.
Lord Eatwell: The Minister is quite right—it is 658 pages, actually, and extremely difficult to read on a computer screen. Will the Treasury undertake to print a copy and provide it to every Member who has taken part in this short debate?
Lord Sassoon: My Lords, different noble Lords will want to digest the material in different ways. Some of us may find it much easier to focus on what we are interested in on a computer screen. I am certainly conscious of the wasteful expenditure of resources and taxpayers’ money when people do not want printed copies. I will investigate, but it may be that copies are available through the Library. I do not know—let me have a look at that. But it is certainly on the website. I suggest that noble Lords may not want to download all 600 pages but will be interested in particular sections. I underline the fact that a huge effort was gone into that far exceeds anything that would normally go into a Keeling schedule.
The noble Lord, Lord Peston, asked about Keeling schedules. When he asked about them a couple of days ago, I had no idea what they were. So I asked for somebody to have a look on the internet, where there is a very interesting debate. It starts by questioning whether these schedules were named after the stunt woman, Liise Keeling, or the distinguished former Member of Parliament for Twickenham, Mr E H Keeling, later Sir Edward. It was the latter who did it in conjunction with Mr R P Croom-Johnson, later
Mr Justice Croom-Johnson. So there was, indeed, a Keeling schedule, but it is something that has fallen out of common use over the past decade and more. I suggest that we have gone rather further than a Keeling schedule in producing a fully amended version of FSMA on the Treasury website. There is not, before I am challenged, an amended version of the Bank of England Act, because the changes that we propose to that Act are relatively straightforward. The major innovations in the Bill, such as Clauses 3 and 5, which we will get to in due course, are drafted as entire new clauses, and may be read and scrutinised very straightforwardly as self-standing provisions.
Lord Peston: This reminds me of the Marx Brothers stuff and the great joke about whether we have an insanity clause. Am I to understand that there is no such thing as a Keeling schedule and that it does not exist? Is that the answer to my question?
Lord Sassoon: It is something that used to exist and the concept is still out there in the ether, but it has fallen out of common use over the past 20 years. For this Bill, there is no Keeling schedule but there is the 658-page, fully amended version of FSMA, which is accessible on the Treasury website. It serves the purpose of a Keeling schedule and does more than that.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I am reluctant to intervene on the Minister again, but it is important that even if he does not provide a print-off of this labour of love, hard copies of this mammoth work should at least be available in the Library. Some of us find that the time that it takes to run off 658 pages on our clapped-out machines is itself unnecessary.
Finally, the Minister may find that a Keeling schedule is exactly what has been done by the Treasury in this regard. That is my understanding of a Keeling schedule.
Lord Sassoon: My Lords, it may be the largest Keeling schedule ever known to this House. I will certainly make sure that the Library is aware of where to find the amended version of FiSMA, and I am sure that it will print copies off on request in the normal way.
I turn now to the substance of this clause. The amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, seek to convert the court of directors into a supervisory board. We will discuss in detail later—as has already been identified by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and others—government Amendment 13 and related amendments which, I suggest, address all the points of substance behind the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, by creating a statutory oversight committee. I will have a lot more to say about that when we get to Amendment 13.
The only substantive difference, as the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has said, between the Government’s amendments and those in his name appears to be in the name of the Bank’s governing body. The noble Lord’s amendments do not seek to change the structure or membership of the court; it is simply, as he identified, that he does not like the term “court”. I agree with other members of the Committee that simply changing
the name is not what we should be focusing on. The name of the Bank’s governing body is largely irrelevant. It is important that it is a body that is fully equipped and prepared to fulfil its role in the new structure effectively and that the non-executives on the court have a clear and explicit remit to oversee the Bank’s performance, both in policy terms and operationally. We will come on to why the Government believe the amendments to the Bill that we have put down are needed.
In answer to the questions about why we put the amendments down when we did, I listened very carefully to all the points on governance and other issues that were made at Second Reading and have come forward, at the earliest practicable date, with amendments ahead of discussion in Committee rather than after it, both in relation to oversight and growth. I make no apology, but your Lordships will appreciate that there was not much time between Second Reading and today to get some important amendments sorted out in detail. I hope that explains what we have done.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, on that point, it is my understanding that Mr Hoban made the commitment to produce this committee at Third Reading in the other place. It does not seem to me that the noble Lord had to wait until after Second Reading here to formulate his amendment.
Lord Sassoon: My Lords, as I said at Second Reading, I wanted to take full account of the wisdom of this House before we finalised and tabled the amendments. That is exactly what we have done and, as I will explain later, I believe that they meet the concerns of many noble Lords who spoke at Second Reading. The new oversight committee achieves the substance of what is required.
However, as has been said by a number of noble Lords in this debate, if we were to change “court” to “supervisory board”, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, it would be grossly misleading. What many people, maybe most people, would understand by a supervisory board is that it would be a board of non-executives exercising independent oversight. Actually, as the Committee should be aware, merely changing the name “court” to “supervisory board” would means that it would still be a body made up of executive and non-executive directors, and therefore it would not have the effect that most people would understand by the term “supervisory board”, unlike the oversight committee which the Government are proposing and which we will come on to. I understand the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell of Coatdyke, makes. We want proper, independent oversight, but changing the name of the court is not the way to do it. This has been an interesting debate but, on the basis of that explanation, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
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Lord Eatwell: Will the noble Lord give his view of the amendments that we could call the Treasury Committee amendments, which are going to come before us and have been tabled by my noble friend Lord McFall and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes?
Lord Sassoon: My Lords, when we come to those amendments I will give my view and the view of the Government, but in this group we are talking about the noble Lord’s amendments only.
Lord Eatwell: I mean generically. I raised the question in my opening remarks as to whether it would be appropriate for this House to give the other place the opportunity to discuss the amendments tabled by its own committee. Does the noble Lord think that is appropriate?
Lord Sassoon: My Lords, we have a series of amendments down in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes and the noble Lord, Lord McFall of Alcluith. The best thing to do is to discuss them when they come up and take them one by one on their merits. If the noble Lord had wanted to discuss all these matters together, he could have grouped a number of amendments together but he, or the usual channels on his behalf, chose not to do so. We had better proceed as per the groupings list.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, the noble Lord is not answering the question about what he considers to be the generic nature of that set of amendments derived from the Treasury Committee report.
I am very grateful to noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. As I understand it, the discussion broke into two parts. Many noble Lords were disturbed by the complexity of the legislation before us and felt that this complexity was preventing a satisfactory consideration of the overall implications of the legislation. Having worked on this for some time, I have some sympathy with them. The noble Lord referred to the many hours that Treasury staff had to devote to creating the unified Bill—the Keeling schedule. Similar hours will no doubt have to be devoted to deriving a full understanding of the implications.
Leaving aside the issue of complexity, I turn to the issue of governance, which lies behind the first amendments that I have proposed and which will be before the Committee as we roll through a number of other amendments. Every noble Lord who spoke, with the exception, to a certain extent, of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, felt that there were important issues to be addressed with respect to the governance of the Bank of England and that the court as currently formulated is not fit for purpose. Some of this will be discussed later, in the context of my Amendment 8 and of Amendment 13, which establishes the oversight committee. There are some major questions to be raised about the oversight committee, which we shall deal with at that point. It does not achieve an effective system of clear, transparent governance in the way that one would expect of a major public institution.
With respect to the name, being a bit of a traditionalist myself, I have some sympathy with the noble Lords, Lord Flight and Lord Burns, who felt that the court might as well be called the court. However, when the noble Lord says that the term “supervisory board” is misleading, do we think that the term “court” is not misleading? Whatever does that mean to anybody not
steeped in the history of the Bank of England? The Minister has failed to address the generic question about the amendments derived from the Treasury Committee in another place.
This is a significant constitutional development which I think is very valuable, but the noble Lord seems not to want to discuss it. We will return at several points—
Lord Sassoon: My Lords, is the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, aware that what he describes as the Treasury Committee amendments were debated on Report in another place? Does he accept that, perhaps contrary to the impression which he may not have meant to give, they were indeed debated on Report in another place?
Lord Eatwell: I think that the noble Lord will find that not all the amendments were debated. Indeed, the key amendments relating to the governance of the Bank of England were withdrawn on the basis of Mr Hoban’s assertion that he was going to bring forward some new arrangements. Therefore, the issue before us is whether those new arrangements measure up to the issues raised by the Treasury Committee—a matter that we will discuss in a moment.
Given the nature of our discussion, which I think has got us under way and raised a number of important issues that are yet to be resolved, for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, if anyone troubles to read the amendment, which stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Peston, they will see that I am asking why we need two more deputy governors. I do not know whether that means that they get higher salaries. Perhaps the noble Lord can tell us the salaries of the members of the Court of Directors. It is not clear to me just who is responsible for financial strategy. The Bill proposes the introduction of one deputy governor for financial stability and one for monetary policy. I do not know how many people are responsible for this. As has been said, there are supervisory committees, boards, a Court of Directors, the Financial Policy Committee, the Monetary Policy Committee and the Treasury, and I assume that ultimately the Chancellor might take a slight interest in financial stability and so on.
Why do we need two new deputy directors? They could be called deputy chairmen, or anything you like, but the point is that we should just let them chair the committees. I assume that the work they will do will be
repeated elsewhere many times. I do not even know whether the Court of Directors will have the final word. To my knowledge, the Court of Directors has never made the final decisions in the past. The noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, once told me that when he was a senior official at the Treasury he attended the Monetary Policy Committee as the Treasury spokesman. I have never been able to find out, either from him or from anyone else, just what the Treasury spokesman spoke about at the Monetary Policy Committee. Clearly, he had some important things to tell that committee before it came to its conclusions.
I suppose that the question underlying our two amendments in this group is: who is ultimately responsible for these major issues? Is it the Court of Directors of the Bank of England, the Financial Policy Committee or the Treasury, and why do we need two new “deputy governors” rather than just “members of the court”? I beg to move.
Lord O'Donnell: Perhaps I may respond to the noble Lord’s comments about the Monetary Policy Committee and the Treasury person on it, having been that Treasury person at a very large number of MPC meetings. That person is referred to as the Treasury representative. In the early stages of the meetings, they would explain what was going on in fiscal policy to allow fiscal monetary co-ordination to take place. However, the convention was that the Treasury representative did not get involved in the committee’s discussion about a decision on interest rates.
The Lord Bishop of Durham: I shall speak to the amendment in my name, which is in this group. The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, and others, have commented that the governor’s powers under this Bill are extraordinary. In fact, in the internal running of the Bank the governor will become totally dominant and virtually unchallengeable, as it will the governor who sits on all the relevant key committees. By virtue not only of sitting on them but of chairing them, the governor will have power over the agendas and the conduct of business. That will enable the governor essentially to control the direction of the PRA, the MPC and the FPC completely.
The purpose of the amendment is to pick up some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, made so well a few moments ago and which had been made earlier. It seeks to balance the powers in the committees so that the deputy governors have control of their own special areas and are capable of ensuring that the committees focus on the areas that they know well. Noble Lords are aware that in the crisis of 2008, part of the problem, which has been brought out in subsequent inquiries, was that the governor’s focus was inevitably on one area and that others were overlooked because they were not the governor’s principal concern at the time. It is therefore necessary to try to balance the internal powers to create a robust and demanding internal discussion within the Bank long before it comes to the oversight or review of what might have gone wrong in the past—in other words, to stop things happening before they happen rather than afterwards.
Government Amendment 13, which is a fascinating, interesting and useful amendment that will be discussed later, seems, with respect to the noble Lord, to be retrospective rather than prospective. There is quite a lot of closing the stable doors after the horses have left. We do not want another run on the banking system; we want people to stop one. It is the old pink elephant problem: how do you prove that the system has stopped pink elephants being around because you never see one? We will be looking backwards, not forwards, with Amendment 13. It is useful in helping us to understand what has gone wrong but not what happened at the time.
My other concern in trying to balance out these major three committees, two being chaired by a deputy governor, is to try to make the FCA slightly less of the runt of the litter. At the moment, with one person having so much control, the FCA, which is the only committee of the big four that the governor does not chair, ends up being overlooked, I fear. Will the Minister comment on whether he agrees with the point made forcefully earlier that the most rigorous models of governance today should be those that are modelled on the Bank, which include ways of ensuring that it is a learning organisation before rather than after disasters happen. What further action can he suggest to ensure that the FCA’s voice is heard clearly, given its widespread impact on consumer finance across the whole nation and not only in the major financial institutions in the City of London?
Lord Sharkey: My Lords, I support Amendment 9, to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham spoke. On Second Reading, several noble Lords commented on the powers that the Bill gives to the Governor of the Bank of England. The noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, made the same point half an hour or so ago. It is clear that such a concentration of power calls for robust checks and balances. To an extent, the Bill recognises this, and some of the government amendments recognise it even more. Perhaps necessarily all the proposed checks and balances are formal and procedural, and many are backward-looking. This is necessary but not sufficient.
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I have, in my commercial life, worked extensively with the chairs, CEOs and senior management of many very large multinational corporations, and all these companies are acutely aware of the dangers of the concentration of power, sometimes of apparently absolute power, in the hands of an individual or small group of individuals. In my experience, all these corporations address the problem in two ways. The first is the usual formal array of non-execs, committees and review bodies, much like the proposed architecture in the Bill. These non-execs, committees and review bodies are of course important and are taken seriously, but this arrangement is widely acknowledged to be somewhat mechanistic, occasionally cumbersome and frequently tardy. I believe this is why most large corporations pay very close attention to the culture of their organisations. They recognise that a clear, widely understood and widely accepted set of values can be the most important and effective check on potentially
over-mighty management and that defining, promoting, teaching and sustaining these values is absolutely critical.
This same point was made forcefully by the noble Lord, Lord McFall, at Second Reading, when he said, referring to the Joint Committee on the draft Financial Services Bill:
“We all agreed that architecture is of secondary importance. The issues that matter are culture, conduct and communication”.—[Official Report, 11/6/12; col. 1182.]
There is probably no way of directly legislating any of these things into existence, and it is probably self-defeating to try, but there is a way of encouraging the development of elements of proper and appropriate culture and conduct. There is a way of encouraging, for example, frequent, informal and effective challenges to apparently overwhelming authority, and this is to have a senior management cadre that feels that it has access and the right to speak frankly to the CEO without necessarily having to operate through formal channels. A frank and challenging direct conversation is often much more valuable and certainly faster than process-driven discussion.
No good corporation insulates its CEO from this kind of access, this kind of frankness or this kind of challenge, and no good corporation allows the CEO to suppress this kind of behaviour. If senior management is genuinely to have this role, it must have clearly defined management responsibilities by which it is not simply the agent of the CEO. Primus inter pares might not be in the traditions of the Bank of England, but we do need to give senior managers some clear authority and sphere of action in a direct sense, which is why I support this amendment. I think it is healthy and right, practically and culturally, that the governor should not chair all of the MPC, the FPC and the PRA. It is right that the deputy governors should chair at least two. In fact, I would go further, as the noble Lord, Lord Myners, did at Second Reading when he suggested that the deputy governors should chair all these committees. I realise that even if the Government were to accept these proposals, as I hope they might, that will not immediately resolve the problem of instilling into the system the appropriate and necessary cultural values.
The Bill is, of course, generally silent on this issue of culture, probably because it is not easy to legislate for, and I sympathise with that. Any corporation faced with the same difficulty, however, would have in place a definition of the required cultural values, a set of working practices for inculcating them and a feedback mechanism for review. The Government should therefore encourage the Bank to act in exactly the same way as these large corporations with respect to culture and should say in this Bill at some point how they intend to give the Bank this encouragement.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, I had considerable sympathy with the amendment of the right reverend Prelate, which I found rather clearer and easier to understand than I did the explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett. I am not convinced that appointing an additional two deputy governors is necessary because I believe these three sub-divisions of the Bank could
be rationalised. However, appointing deputy governors will tend to make the governance of the Bank of England more rather than less level in that if you have a governor and one deputy, only one person comes close to challenging the governor’s authority. As proposed in the Bill, there will be three deputy governors, which will mean that the perception of the balance of power will be more level than before.
It is completely unnecessary for the governor to chair the Financial Stability Committee, because the governor chairs the court and the Financial Stability Committee is a sub-committee of the court. It is not right that the chairman of the court—that is, the governor—should also chair one of its own committees. That is highly illogical.
Lord Turnbull: I do not think that the governor chairs the court any longer.
Viscount Trenchard: I apologise to the noble Lord and I stand corrected. Perhaps the governor should chair the court. However, where possible, the deputy governors rather than the governor should chair the sub-committees.
Lord Turnbull: My Lords, I am not in favour of the amendments. First, there is the post of the deputy governor for prudential regulation. This is the old head of the FSA, in so far as it deals with macroprudential regulation, who is given the status of deputy governor in order to bring him into the councils of the bank. No extra posts or salaries are being created here. One might have been created by the creation of the FSA, but that is not here.
Secondly, as to the checks and balances on the governor, I do not think that a committee as important as either the NPC or the FPC being chaired by his deputy is a good way of exerting supervision of the governor. You cannot work for someone and supervise them at the same time.
At the moment, the governor chairs these committees and brings their thinking together; and, as we discussed earlier, there are other mechanisms around the court or the oversight committee—whatever it is called—that check the over-mighty power of the governor. Using one of his deputies to do this does not make sense.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I shall not talk about the Treasury representatives because we have an amendment relating to them later in the list and I shall save my vitriol for then.
I did not understand Amendment 9 until the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham spoke. I am grateful to him because I now understand it. In essence, he is saying that three different people ought to chair the three different committees, which makes perfectly good sense. Chairing a committee is an important task and would involve a great deal of work, and I am sympathetic to the amendment.
However, going back to my and my noble friend Lord Barnett’s amendment, these appointments are only titular. It is not for your Lordships’ House to
decry those who like titles. In other words, if there are three people, men or women—although I am afraid that these days it seems to be all men in the Bank of England—who want to be called deputy governor, it is no big deal. If it turns them on, and if a wife refers to her husband as the deputy governor and that cheers her up, why not? However, I am concerned as to whether it is more than that in two ways. First, do you get paid more for being a deputy governor? The Minister keeps telling us that we have to be economical, so we have to ask whether this is the correct way to spend money.
More specifically, the amendment is also about the following. First, can we have a full job description in each case? Does a full job description for these three posts exist, and if so can we see it? Secondly, how are the three of them appointed? For example, are the three jobs advertised, and can someone from outside apply to be a deputy governor with appropriate references, experience and so on? Thirdly, who appoints to this post? Those are the questions that I wanted answering. In the transparent, modern world in which we live, the answers should be that anyone can apply for these jobs, that the jobs should be advertised, and that there should be a precise job description and a proper appointing panel. That is the world in which we live, so I hope that the answer to all my questions is yes.
Baroness Kramer: My Lords, perhaps I may comment quickly on Amendment 9. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, presented what I suspect will be the Government’s argument, which is that having the Governor of the Bank of England in all these roles provides co-ordination. At Second Reading, I described the twin-peaks strategy as a small mountain range, so your Lordships will understand that I appreciate the need for co-ordination, but to use as the co-ordinating mechanism the single person of the Governor of the Bank of England strikes me as exceedingly inadvisable. The challenge is huge. It is a mechanism for co-ordination that is likely to suffocate, challenge and encourage group-think, but, frankly, no matter how much of a superman the individual who is appointed to that post is, I cannot see that they could possibly have shoulders broad enough to carry all those roles in the demanding way which this legislation and the economy require. Co-ordination strikes me as not the appropriate argument. If the argument is to be made, it must be on other grounds and not to make up for other weaknesses in the Bill.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, the essence of the debate on these amendments comes down to a lack of a clear governance structure in the Bank. If there were a clear governance structure, with the roles which exist in modern corporations—described clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey—being performed, we could understand how the co-ordinating activities referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, might be carried out. In general, any organisation would be expected to review its internal operations and create an efficient internal management structure, but there is no evidence that the Bank of England is capable of doing this. Given the significant powers that are to be bestowed on the Bank, surely the Government cannot
sit idly by. This may be unfortunate, and primary legislation is probably too rigid for the goals that the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, seeks, but we cannot accept a dictatorship at the Bank or even a belief elsewhere that such a dictatorship exists.
Generally, I am in favour of developing the roles of the deputy governors, particularly in the three major areas of financial stability, monetary policy and prudential regulation. That could provide a framework within which a more collegiate structure of decision-making was developed in the Bank. As I noted at Second Reading, given the differing roles of the MPC, the FPC and the PRA, it is likely that they will put forward contradictory proposals. If one person is supposed to chair all those committees, he or she will either be driven mad or will concentrate on one area to the neglect of others, as we saw the Bank do in the run-up to the crisis. Therefore it seems to me that the right reverend Prelate’s idea of having the deputy governors chair the committees is a good one. Then the Bank could presumably develop a proper management structure in which it was the role of the governor of the Bank to gather together the views of the committees and develop a coherent policy structure from their differing perspectives.
The right reverend Prelate is on to a very important development. It is unfortunate that these procedures do not seem to be developing within the Bank itself and that we do not have a clear governance structure for a Bank which is going to be placed, as the Government say, at the centre of UK financial regulation, and therefore I am very sympathetic to the ideas that the right reverend Prelate has developed.
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Lord Flight: My Lords, these committees seem to me to be very different bodies. The MPC and the FPC are, in essence, intellectual bodies reviewing policy, one in the monetary area and the other in the stability of the system. They are not bodies employing hordes of people carrying out an executive function. This is in contrast to the PRA, which will be an organisation employing lots of people doing a detailed regulatory task, and the court itself, the board that runs the Bank of England which does all the banking and other things. They are very different entities, and the PRA and the court actually need chief executives. I think it very reasonable that the chief executive of the PRA—you can call him the deputy governor, that is fine—and the chief executive of the Bank of England should be the governor himself. Thus the governor should not be chairman of the court, which should have an independent chairman. When it comes to the MPC and the FPC, the chairman is actually the person who is hosting the taking of the decisions, and so I do not think it is inappropriate for the governor to be chairman of both or at least chairman of one.
Lord O'Donnell: I support the noble Lord, Lord Flight, in that and pick up on what the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, was saying about this issue. I completely agree that the problem is whether the governor concentrates on one area to the exclusion of the other. You risk making things worse if you make the governor chair of one of these committees and not the other. I would say that you cannot have a Governor of the
Bank of England who is not sitting on the Monetary Policy Committee. I just cannot see how you would have a governor who does not have a vote on the interest rate for this country. It does not seem to make any sense whatever. The Financial Policy Committee is going to take decisions on instruments such as loan-to-value ratios which will have quite an important bearing on macroeconomic issues which also matter to the MPC. I completely accept the issues about concentration of power. They are very important and should be handled through the accountability relationships that we set up. I also agree that the third body is very different and therefore the governor should not chair it, but the MPC and the FPC overlap so much that I do not think it is feasible not to have one person chairing both. If you were governor, and sent your deputy to chair one of these meetings, can you imagine how much time would be spent instructing them on what you thought they should do and getting feedback? It is far more transparent and open that one person chairs both.
Lord Sassoon: My Lords, this has been a very interesting discussion. Let me first deal with Amendments 3 and 4 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Barnett and Lord Peston, and remind the House of one or two background issues with the deputy governors. First, we are not creating any new positions here. We are talking about two deputy governors who were created in the Bank of England by the Bank of England Act 1998. For the avoidance of doubt, we are not talking about anything new, but about existing deputy governors. Of course, the details of their pay and that of all other members of the Bank’s senior management are set out in the annual report and accounts. If it helps the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, page 41 of the 2011 accounts sets it all out in full detail. We are not talking about something new here.
As to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Peston, about job descriptions, when the role is advertised for a new appointment, a full job spec of the sort that he would expect is indeed produced. If he will forgive me, we will come on to questions of appointment in a further grouping, when no doubt we can come back to that point.
The two amendments open up a discussion about why we have deputy governors and what is their role, so I should say a word or two on that. I suggest that the role of the deputy governors is crucial. It would be enormously challenging for the governor to handle the breadth of policy and operational responsibilities of the Bank without support from the two specialist deputy governors. Each of the existing deputies is responsible for the Bank’s activities relating to one of its two statutory objectives: monetary policy and financial stability. That in itself goes 90% of the way to explaining the job description in very clear terms. The deputy governors run those areas on a day-to-day basis; they take the lead in many cases in international negotiations in those areas; they communicate with the public; and they have a major role in the relationship with the Government and Parliament in their respective areas.
Particularly given the enhanced responsibilities that the Bill will give to the Bank, I see absolutely no reason why we would want to weaken the Bank’s
senior executive team by removing the deputy governors. I hope that that is not what the noble Lords who tabled the amendment would want, although that would be its effect. Rather the reverse: the capacity of the Bank’s senior team must be strengthened to equip it for its new responsibilities, which is precisely why Clause 1 creates a new deputy governor post. The third deputy governor will be the chief executive of the PRA and will be responsible for prudential regulation within the Bank. This has been a useful teasing out of what the deputy governors do, and I hope that that explanation has proved useful.
I turn to Amendment 9 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, which would require the court to remove responsibilities from the governor. It will be no surprise to the Committee when I say at the outset that I do not believe that that is appropriate. The governor is the most senior executive in the Bank and is ultimately accountable for all the Bank’s decisions and actions. Of course, a great deal of Bank policy-making is delegated by statute to policy committees, including the MPC and the FPC. Indeed, it could be argued that most of the Bank’s most vital decisions are taken by the FPC and the MPC—and, in future, also by the PRA board.
I largely agree with the three noble Lords who are very distinguished former Permanent Secretaries to the Treasury. The Committee should be very grateful that they are here and able to illuminate this debate with such clarity. However, having heard the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, in particular, at Second Reading, I suspect that there may be moments later down the track when we may not be in complete agreement. The interventions of the noble Lords, Lord Turnbull and Lord O’Donnell, on the amendment have been illuminating. The noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, quite rightly highlighted the co-ordinating role and the need for balance and the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, rightfully made the point about where the buck stops. I suggest that it is right that the governor, as the head of the Bank and being fully accountable for the decisions taken by the Bank’s policy-making bodies, should chair these committees.
I will come on to some rightful concerns about that position in a moment but I add, in parenthesis, that I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, for answering the question that I have had on a number of occasions from the noble Lords, Lord Barnett and Lord Peston, about what the Treasury representative does on the MPC. I was privileged to be there on one occasion; even the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury needs a holiday in August occasionally, so I deputised. I hope that the very clear explanation from the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, will mean that we do not get the question quite as often in the next two years, so I am grateful for that.
The substantive concern underlining Amendment 9, about the concentration of power in the Bank and in the governor as an individual, is an important issue. I was not going to argue for one minute, and will not argue, that the oversight committee is the answer to that point. No doubt we will come on to talk at length about the oversight committee which, among other things, responds to the Treasury Committee’s specific
recommendation that reviews be retrospective in order to allow enough time to pass to learn the lessons effectively from decisions and actions that are taken by the Bank. We will come on to that but it does not address the issues we have here.
Let me suggest, in answer to the point in Amendment 9, that there are some effective checks and balances in the system. To start with, in each of the governor’s roles—as chair of the MPC, the FPC and the PRA, and as head of the Bank itself—he or she will be both supported and challenged by a group of experts. Those experts will include internal Bank executives such as the specialist deputy governors, who we have talked about; the executive directors and the non-executives of the two governing bodies, the court and the PRA board; and external members of the policy committees, the FPC and the MPC. I certainly agree with my noble friend Lord Sharkey that that challenge is important. It is already there and it will continue in the new construct so that in each area of the governor’s areas of responsibility, he or she will not be responsible for taking decisions alone. In the MPC and FPC, policy decisions are taken collectively, with each member having a voice and a vote.
On the specific issues raised by my noble friend Lord Sharkey, those votes do not always go the governor’s way. Members of the Committee may be aware that the governor has found himself on the losing side of the MPC vote on a number of occasions, most recently in the June MPC meeting. I suggest, first, that there is the right construct of individuals to challenge and that, secondly, we have evidence that challenge takes place and is effective. Equally, on the governing bodies of the Bank and the PRA, decisions will be taken collectively, with non-executive members being in the majority on both bodies. As chair of the PRA board, the governor will ensure strategic co-ordination between the PRA and the rest of the Bank group; that aspect of co-ordination is also important. That will help to ensure an effective and joined-up response to emerging threats to financial stability.
However, the governor will not play a hands-on role in the day-to-day running of the PRA. That will be the job of the deputy governor for prudential regulation in his or her role as chief executive. The governor will therefore be fully supported in all the different roles and will receive effective challenge from both Bank insiders and external members. It is entirely right that the responsibilities of the governor and the arrangements to ensure that he or she is both supported and held properly accountable should be determined and set by Parliament through the legislation we are scrutinising today, rather than delegated to the discretion of the Court of Directors of the Bank. For all those reasons, therefore, I cannot support the amendments in this group. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, and the right reverend Prelate to withdraw their respective amendments.
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Lord Peston: Before the Minister finishes what he is saying, could I ask him a question which is a sort of question of economics? I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, that it would seem very strange indeed if the Governor of the Bank of England did not
chair both the FPC and the Monetary Policy Committee. But then I ask myself, “Does that mean that there is a vast amount of spare capacity in the governor; that he has been twiddling his thumbs looking for other things to do, and this is a way of making use of his skills?”. This is a very serious question. I remember that when I chaired the Economic Affairs Committee—or rather, its predecessor—the previous governor chaired the committee in a way completely different from the way that the present governor chairs the MPC. I could enlarge on that, if the Committee liked. I was given a complete set of papers for the MPC, a vast amount, which I found fascinating. On the basis of those papers, I would have found it a full-time job just to chair that committee. I am therefore at somewhat of a loss as to where the spare capacity comes from. What is the governor not now going to do in order to chair the FPC? That is a very serious question indeed. This would not have been a problem for the previous governor, because he regarded his role as chairman as just chairman. He did not intervene; for example, he always voted last. He was never defeated, and when he used to give me lunch regularly I would say to him, “There is no big deal in being on the losing side”. He said, “It is impossible for me as Governor of the Bank of England ever to be defeated in the MPC. It would be quite out of the question”. I was very impressed with the present governor being willing to be defeated. I am often defeated, but I never think I am wrong; I just shrug and walk away.
Could the Minister therefore tell me where the spare capacity in the governor is to be found, so that he can chair both these committees entirely satisfactorily, in the way the present governor does it?
Lord Sassoon: My Lords, first of all, I am not going to respond to the challenge of how different governors have handled committee chairing. As I have explained, I have sat in on one meeting of the MPC. We have other noble Lords, or at least one, who have sat in on a lot of meetings. I am not sure where the noble Lord, Lord Peston, gets his first-hand experience from, but let us put that aside. I hear now that he has no first-hand experience. Well, I am glad to hear that, but let us put that on one side.
I appreciate that in this Bill, and under the present arrangements, the Governor of the Bank of England has a very challenging job. The essence of what we are putting back into the Bank of England is, of course, leadership in financial supervision, which was part of the historical role of the Bank, except for the last 15 years or so. The Bank has essentially had these responsibilities in the past. The governor is and will be very well supported, partly by the deputy governors, as I have explained, but also, of course, by the whole Bank and PRA executive. This whole construct has been discussed in detail with the present governor, so I am fully confident, without being able to go through the governor’s time and analyse it, that this has been carefully thought about and the new proposed role of the governor is entirely manageable with the support that the governor has and will have.
Lord O'Donnell: Having sat through large numbers of meetings of the Monetary Policy Committee chaired by Eddie George and Mervyn King, I know
that the reality is that the chairman has one vote, although they have a casting vote. That dominates the style of the meetings; they are not so much dominated by the style of the individual who is chairing them. Having sat through all those, I do not think that the contrast is as great as the noble Lord, Lord Peston, makes out. It is certainly true that I remember one occasion when the vote was coming round to Eddie George and he was 4-3 down, and he chose to use his vote to make it 4-4 and then used his casting vote to make it 5-4. That was an interesting use of the chair’s power. It is important, though, that the chair has only one vote and that therefore, of the nine, they can be outvoted; indeed, that is a good thing.
As laid down in the previous Act, the governor has always had responsibility for financial stability, so it is a question of how they choose to use it. Like the noble Lord, Lord Peston, I worry about the sheer weight of meetings because it is not just these meetings but the international ones as well. That is an issue, and it may be that one of the things that we got wrong with the Bank of England Act was specifying precisely how many meetings there should be. On occasion, it would be nice if you could go through a period of longed-for financial and economic stability when you might be able to pass on one or two of these meetings and not be forced to have them quite so often when actually there was not that much to do. However, that is a nirvana that we are not that close to at the moment.
Lord Barnett: My noble friend and I put down the amendment not because we care too much about whether someone is called a deputy governor but to discuss the underlying problem here. The Minister might be saved a lot of work in future; as we have heard, we are very fortunate in this House as it is, without reform, in having three noble Lords who can answer our debates, and the Minister need not bother. I am grateful to them, and we are fortunate to have them here. I know that one of them is even worrying about the job of the governor and whether he can cope with it—I see the noble Lord nodding—and he may find at the end of our debates on this Bill that he would rather not bother.
The Minister has not replied to my questions, but of course I did not expect him to. He did not tell us what the salaries were or whether someone gets more of a salary as a deputy than as an ordinary member. He told us that the job was advertised and anyone could apply. I wish I had known that years ago; I might have thought of applying. I do not know who was on the committee then; it may have been those three noble Lords on the Cross Benches who decided on the candidates. Whoever it was, we have had an interesting debate. However, what we have not yet discussed, although no doubt we will have other opportunities to do so, is the job of,
“a Deputy Governor for financial stability”,
After all this, I am still not clear what the Monetary Policy Committee does, what the Financial Policy Committee does, what these deputy governors and their committee do, what the governor is going to do, what the Chancellor is going to do and who the hell is doing what. I am sure that in our later debates the
noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, will be interested to know. As I have no intention of applying for any of these jobs, I would like to know how they are decided and who applies. Incidentally, as my noble friend Lord Peston said, it is interesting that there is never a woman anywhere in the Bank. There may be some lower down in some menial jobs.
Lord Peston: There has been one.
Lord Barnett: Name one. Anyway, I do not wish to delay the Committee much longer, and I will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Sassoon: Before the noble Lord sits down, I would point out that very recently Rachel Lomax was a very distinguished deputy governor of the Bank, to name but one, and there are now some very able senior female members in the banking sector, to avoid any doubt on that matter.
Lord Peston: Women comprise half the population of the country, do they not? If we look at ratios, there is not a lot to boast about.
Lord Barnett: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
5: Clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert—
“(2A) Any person appointed under subsection (2)(a) shall be appointed with the consent of the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons.”
Lord McFall of Alcluith: My Lords, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I am moving Amendment 5 and speaking to Amendment 10, which is consequential on Amendment 5.
As the noble Lords, Lord O’Donnell and Lord Sharkey, said, this is about the concentration of power in and the accountability of the governor in the new financial system. In fact, Alistair Darling, when he appeared before the Joint Committee on the draft Financial Services Bill, called the governor the “Sun King”. I would suggest that we are giving the governor an impossible job. The MPC and FPC require an academic economist of the highest calibre, and we have that in the present governor. However, the Bank of England, as it is comprised now—with the PRA and the FCA and so on—is the equivalent of a multinational enterprise. It requires a chief executive and skills that are separate from those required on the Monetary Policy Committee and the Financial Policy Committee. We make a mistake by not realising that particular point.
I have invited the governor to come here so that all Peers could listen to him, in the hope of understanding and inquiring how he sees the position. He will be
departing in 2013, so we are legislating for the future in this respect. Perhaps I may give my own view on the debate taking place at the moment about deputy governors, and so on, as a former chairman of the Treasury Committee and someone who had an intimate association with the governor and others especially during the financial crisis. I believe that the words “deputy governor” relegate the authority of the position. We have a vertical accountability here but we do not have a horizontal accountability. That is what we should be looking at on this issue—how do we get that horizontal accountability?
The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, was correct about the concept of culture and ethics. I raised the issue of culture and ethics when the Northern Rock problems arose and it was a foreign language to the financial services industry of the time. The people involved thought that we were talking about Moses bringing the tablets down from the hill. However, culture is about behaviour, and ethics is about how you resolve conflicts of interest. It is as simple as that. I was delighted to see that the FSA, after being pressed for many years, has taken on that view. In his last speech before departing, Hector Sants spoke exclusively about the issue of culture. The issue of culture and behaviour is extremely important. If we concentrate on titles, then we will miss the main point. That is the issue that I would like to get across now. We need checks and balances.
My experience with the financial crisis also showed that when the crisis hit, both the Treasury and the Bank of England were found wanting. The Treasury had diminished its financial expertise. I knew the people in the Treasury who had the financial expertise—two of them have left by now, but at the time there were three. That was the situation we were in. If we wanted a response to the financial crisis from the Government we could not get one because they did not have the skills and understanding. The Treasury therefore invited people in from the City to advise it, which is where the problem started in the first place. That is the paucity of the situation at the moment.
Parliament therefore has a very important role to play in terms of the checks and balances. It was acknowledged by the governor and others that the Treasury Committee played an important role in Northern Rock, particularly in the legislation that was put through on “lender of last resort” resolution regimes and so on.
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The amendment says that Parliament has to exercise its authority. The Treasury Committee has asked for a statutory power of veto over the appointment or dismissal of a governor. Given that a future governor will now be appointed for eight years, which will overlap with two Governments, maybe of different complexions, it is important that the independent authority of the governor is established.
When the Statistics Commission was established, Sir Michael Scholar was appointed as its first chief executive and came before the Select Committee to be grilled about it. The first question that I asked was about his son, Tom Scholar, who worked in No. 10, and whether he had had any contact with him before
the appointment. Sir Michael, being an individual of the utmost integrity, said, “Absolutely not. He didn’t know that I was applying for the job”. Speaking to me months later, he said, “That appearance before the Select Committee, when I was asked all those different questions, gave me an authority that I didn’t previously have”. Therefore, the role of Parliament can be very positive in ensuring that individuals get that authority and have their independence preserved. This is part of the checks and balances. It is in that spirit, on a cross-party basis, that this amendment has been tabled. I beg to move.
Lord Turnbull: My Lords, the amendment raises a very important question, largely unresolved, about what responsibility the Executive and the legislature have for public appointments. The truth is that we have not found a definitive solution to it.
There is a case for the status quo, which involves the candidate being interviewed by the Treasury Select Committee and, if the Minister ultimately decides that he wishes to go ahead with an appointment, the Minister being free to make the appointment. However, the bar has been raised and it has been made more difficult to bring forward a candidate of poor merit. There are also advantages to the candidate of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord McFall, has just mentioned.
The second option is for the candidate to be interviewed but for the committee to have a veto. At the moment we are still talking about appointments, and that is what we have with the OBR.
The third option is the scheme that was the subject of a report by the Institute for Government, under the chairmanship of a much beloved Member of this House, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. It suggests dividing candidates into two tiers. These are unambiguously tier-1 appointments. The Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Government propose someone and the candidate is then interviewed. If the committee is dissatisfied, it then summons the Minister to defend their case. If there is still no resolution, the matter goes to the whole House; it does not simply go back to the Select Committee. The OBR case, which I may have voted for at the time, is a bit of an anomaly. You either stay where you are or go for the wider power. If there is a serious disagreement, the whole House should be involved.
As for dismissal, this is in some ways even more important. If the Government are to remove the Governor of the Bank of England, the issue is so big that it should go beyond the Treasury Select Committee and be a matter for the whole House. However, there is one caveat. Did he jump or was he pushed? I can think of many instances, including that of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, where someone might resign because their position has been made untenable. The Minister may say, “I did not sack him. It had nothing to do with me. He decided to go”, yet all the time he has been pushing away, undermining his position. We do not really have very much control over that as that has to be a question of conduct. I have some sympathy with the principle that this post, particularly if it comes to a dismissal, needs some very powerful protection. However, if it is that important it should be referred to the whole House and not simply to the committee.
Baroness Wheatcroft: My Lords, I speak in favour of Amendment 6. The amendment concerns the corporate governance of the Bank, and we have heard much this afternoon about perceived gaps in that. I understand the desire to strengthen the court, but I think that this can be achieved without drastic changes either of name—as the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, said, “What is in a name?”—or in structure. In particular, I have qualms about giving strong new powers to the Treasury Select Committee. Having heard my noble friend Lord Turnbull, I think that if we go in that direction, perhaps it should be the whole House that gets to answer the question of who should be the future governor.
However, we need not do anything quite so drastic yet. If we wish to strengthen the governance of the Bank, it seems to me more appropriate to do so by giving the court—or supervisory board, if you want to call it that—an enhanced role. The government amendments that will be moved later this afternoon go some way towards doing that with the formation of the oversight committee. It certainly enhances the remit of the non-executives from where it is currently perceived to be. It may be retrospective, but the power of being held to account retrospectively is quite a powerful force with regard to current behaviour.
Nevertheless, the court already has significant powers. The Bank of England Act 1998 stipulates:
“The court … shall manage the Bank’s affairs, other than the formulation of monetary policy”.
Some have interpreted that as being little more than looking after the housekeeping, and it has sometimes appeared that way. However, the Act goes on to say that,
“the court’s functions … include determining the Bank’s objectives (including objectives for its financial management) and strategy”.
Surely the ability to determine strategy is a pretty powerful one.
The noble Lord, Lord Burns, has pointed out that within the court there is pretty much the structure of a corporate board. Perhaps it has not always seemed that way, but we need the court to feel empowered to use the powers that it has. Much will depend on the ability and willingness of the members of the court to take a tough and challenging line; and there is no reason why they should not if they are well qualified and strong.
We have heard about the need for challenge; the court should be providing it. However, I believe that the Government need to send a firm signal about how important they believe the role of the court to be. In a normal company, the crucial role of the chairman is to ensure that the company has the best and most effective chief executive. Companies thrive best when the chairman and the chief executive have a constructive relationship and mutual regard. Is it not therefore imperative that, even though the Bank is no ordinary company, the chairman should at least have some involvement in the appointment of the chief executive?
This amendment does not call for drastic change, but in demanding that the Chancellor should consult with the chairman of the court—or the supervisory body, should that be preferred—it would underline the importance of the court and the notice that the Government want to take of it. It would encourage the court to be brave, perhaps braver than it has been
in the past. Formal discussions may go on now between the Chancellor and the chairman of the court, but there is no mistaking what a low-profile role the chairman has had—indeed, some thought that the governor was the chairman of the court. I think that we need the chairman of the court to have a rather more effective, higher-profile role. That could start with a formal requirement that the Chancellor should negotiate and discuss the future governor.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 8A in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett. In doing so, I shall not comment on Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Kramer and Lady Wheatcroft, simply on the grounds that the subject is totally beyond me. I am no expert on governance whatever, and I could not tell good from bad governance if it hit me over the head. However, what the noble Baroness said sounded very persuasive, and I am sure that she is right.
I also apologise to my noble friend Lord McFall. I just did not notice his Amendment 10. If I had done so, I would have tabled an Amendment 10A as I have tabled Amendment 8A.
I take noble Lords back to the Bank of England Bill, which the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, and I played a full part in debating. Indeed, one thing that I still remember with enormous pleasure and some amusement is the fact that, while the noble Lord and I were enthusiastically in favour of the Bill and said so, Conservative noble Lords who were then on the opposition Benches were doubtful. One of my tasks was to try to persuade many Conservative Peers that what Gordon Brown was doing was not only the right thing but that it was a very strong move in a Conservative direction to give independence to the Bank of England for monetary policy. I still give the odd lecture, and I sometimes boast that I was once involved in educating the Conservative Party in the correct way in which to run monetary policy.
In the course of debating the Bank of England Bill, all references to feeding back were to the House of Commons. The noble Lord, Lord Barnett, and I put down an amendment—I think that it was the only one that was accepted from us—to say that wherever the word “House of Commons” appeared it should be deleted and replaced with “Parliament”, and the Bill was changed so that Parliament became the body, meaning that it included the House of Lords. That established the fact, on which Lord Williams of Mostyn got a definitive opinion from the Clerk of the Parliaments, that the House of Lords is fully entitled to look at any matters of this kind and to be consulted on them. The Commons does not have to take any notice of us on these matters, but we can certainly exercise our rights. That is why I object very much to the form of Amendment 10 in my noble friend’s name and feel that the correct wording should be, “Treasury Committee of the House of Commons and the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords”. This is a matter of principle for your Lordships’ House. I am personally not persuaded by any of what might then happen, but that is another story. If it is going to be done, I feel very strongly that both Houses should have access.
That was all about appointment, which comes up several times later on other things, but I shall make one speech do for all the other times it comes up. In my total naivety, it never occurred to me that there was any question of removal from office being a serious matter. That is another reason why I apologise to my noble friend. I would probably emigrate if we got to a state in our society where we were dealing with the removal from office of the Governor of the Bank of England. I hope that that was what the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, was saying as well. We are all very keen on science fiction, but I think that we can go a little too far.
Baroness Kramer: My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendments 5, 6 and 10, so I think I will by definition be hated by any future Governor of the Bank of England.
I want to speak for a moment on Amendment 6, which was spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft. The 2009 report by Sir David Walker, on behalf of the Government, which took a detailed look at corporate governance in the UK banking industry, is very relevant. Your Lordships will remember his recommendation that:
“Balance also needs to be found between the role of executives and non-executives on a well-functioning bank board”.
Amendment 6 goes a significant way towards achieving that and establishing that real relationship between a non-executive chair and the Governor of the Bank of England as the chief executive. That distinction is also important for the purposes of accountability which others, including the Minister, have described as significant and important.
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Looking at Amendments 5 and 10, when I was in the other place I had the privilege of being on the Treasury Select Committee for about six months under the outstanding chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord McFall. What struck me about it was that, like many committees in the other place and here, it was not party partisan in the way it operated. We sometimes see in the United States that it infects its confirmation process. Here, we have perhaps achieved the situation where committees understand their responsibility both to Parliament and to the community at large. Therefore, to deny the opportunity for a democratic part of the House to have a proper say in the appointment of a figure so critical and the opportunity to bring what are often years of direct experience and observation to that moment of final selection is a real loss. We have within this group of amendments a real opportunity to change the democratic profile and the confidence and accountability with which the governor operates. We should seize these opportunities in this Bill.
Lord Burns: My Lords, I support Amendment 6 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft. As she said, in terms of strengthening the power of the court or the board of directors, whatever we are going to call it, giving the appropriate powers, respect and position to the non-executive chairman of that court would be a very important part of making it an effective functioning body.
I was Permanent Secretary at the Treasury in 1993 when Eddie George was appointed governor and Rupert Pennant-Rea deputy governor without any warning being given to any of the members of the Court of the Bank of England. It caused a great deal of upset among members of the court who felt that they had been undermined by the lack of warning. In a world where we are trying to build some good corporate, modern, transparent governance, as we have heard today, giving a role to the chairman of the court, at least in terms of informing him or consulting him, would be an important part of it.
With respect to the amendments covering the powers of the Treasury Select Committee, my noble friend Lord Turnbull has set out the analysis of that position. It would be wrong to underestimate the power of the Treasury Committee simply in terms of its ability to summon people and to question them. I regard the Treasury Committee—I have watched it for many years and I appeared before it many times—as a very skilled body in terms of oversight. It fulfilled its role in terms of challenge, questioning and advice. I would rather it did the job that way rather than by seeking to have vetoes over positions. It can make a huge impact simply by the way it brings people in, talks to them, summarises its opinions and then leaves it in the hands of Ministers to decide how far they wish to take account of those views and whether they really want to push it. At the point at which they want to push it, the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, probably come into play.
I particularly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Peston. I cannot remember an occasion when the term of a Governor of the Bank of England was shortened other than by his own will. I would have thought that it would be an issue of some significance that would require not just the House of Commons but, as the noble Lord, Lord Peston, said, Parliament in general to agree it.
Lord Flight: My Lords, I also support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, for essentially the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and as part of the process of restoring the court to being a proper board.
I want to comment on Amendment 5. I have mixed views, but I think it is quite healthy that someone being appointed to such an important role should be subject to vetting in the same sort of way that occurs typically in the United States and that it probably is the Treasury Select Committee that is equipped to handle that vetting.
If I may digress, the present Governor of the Bank of England studied economics at the same university as me at the same time, and anyone that knew that knew that the teaching of economics at that time at that university was appallingly bad. That illustrates that it takes some effort to assess the sort of mind that someone being appointed to that job has got. The absence of any form of politically accountable examination is probably wrong in today’s world. Therefore Amendment 5 is worthy of serious consideration.
Lord Northbrook: My Lords, I disagree with Amendment 5. It gives the Treasury Select Committee too much power. As I understand it, the Treasury Select
Committee already holds pre-commencement hearings with those who have been selected to become governors and deputy governors. Furthermore, as I understand it, the Government have no powers to remove a Governor of the Bank of England; rather the Treasury must give its consent if the Bank decides the governor has met the criteria for removal. It is the Bank’s decision to make. The pre-commencement hearings provide the right balance between giving Parliament an opportunity to question the new appointee on their views and qualifications without bringing into question or placing doubts over the appointment itself.
Lord Tugendhat: My Lords, I was unable to participate in the early stages of the debate this afternoon because I was at a Select Committee, but now that I am here I should like, on the basis of experience, to support the proposition of my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft—not experience of the court of the Bank of England, I hasten to add, but of the European Commission. The President of the European Commission is appointed quite separately from the other members of the Commission and he has no particular power over who else is going to become a member. The way it is done leaves him at the mercy of Governments. My experience under a very strong and good president in the case of Roy Jenkins and under a much weaker and less effective president in Gaston Thorn is that if the chairman or president, whatever he is called, of a body has no influence over the appointment of his colleagues or over whether they stay or go, it seriously diminishes the significance of the person in charge.
As the noble Lord, Lord Burns, said earlier, we are trying to put together something that has a governance structure in keeping with the modern age and which sets an example, inasmuch as that is possible in a body such as the Bank of England which is quite separate from the corporate sector, to the rest of the country. If the chairman is to be taken seriously by the governor and, indeed, by the entire Bank of England beneath the governor, it is essential that he should be seen to be somebody who has played a significant role in the appointment. It would be quite unacceptable if a governor were appointed in whom the chairman did not have confidence. It would be quite unacceptable if the governor felt that the chairman did not have confidence in him, just as it would be unacceptable if the chairman felt that the governor did not have confidence in the chairman.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, has put forward a very sensible and practical proposition. As I say, I speak with experience of having served in a body where the chairman did not have the powers that the noble Baroness suggests. My experience is that that was not a very good way of doing things.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, these amendments raise some interesting and important issues with respect to the person of the governor. Despite the warm words of the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, about degrees of consultation, balance and so on, the idea remains that the person will be endowed, under this legislation, with quite extraordinary powers and therefore the process of appointment should be more transparent and subject to consideration by democratically elected
Members. If we are to accept an unelected individual having these powers, at the very least the appointment process should be transparent.
The idea that the Treasury Select Committee should express its views is a very good one, but I am not sure about this notion of a veto. That goes a little too far. We do not want to politicise appointments to the extent that has occurred in the United States, which makes me nervous about the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, that appointments might end up being considered by the whole House, which would inevitably be whipped and become very political indeed. The Treasury Select Committee, although it may sometimes be eccentric, is not party political in quite that sense. It is a good idea that the Treasury Select Committee is consulted about an appointment and it would be a bold Chancellor who would ignore the committee’s views. Since the committee does not have a veto, it is less likely to have the propensity to develop into an overly politicised hanging court. That covers Amendment 5, which is one of the amendments from the Treasury Select Committee in another place put forward by my noble friend Lord McFall and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes.
I am sympathetic to the idea expressed in the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, and found the arguments put forward by the noble Lords, Lord Burns and Lord Tugendhat, convincing. The notion that the chairman should be consulted and that the degree of confidence in the relationship between the chairman and the governor should thereby be established seems to have the ring of good sense about it. The Government should take this matter under serious consideration.
My noble friend Lord Peston referred to the role of the House of Lords. Although the expertise in your Lordships’ House often comes to bear most effectively and positively on Treasury issues, in the context of an appointment of this seriousness and magnitude, one really has to turn to elected Members. If the constitution of your Lordships’ House changes in the future, then perhaps the House of Lords could have a role in this respect. However, for the moment, the Treasury Select Committee should be the focus of consultation—
Lord Peston: The noble Lord has rather lost me. Is he saying that he agrees that the Commons should have a veto but the Lords should not, or that neither should have a veto?
Lord Eatwell: I hoped that I had made clear that I was not in favour of a veto for the Treasury Select Committee, but was very much in favour of it being consulted.
Lord Peston: In that case, I really cannot see the noble Lord’s argument at all. I hate to disagree with anybody sitting on my own Front Bench, but if this is a matter of consultation, it is a matter of great significance that your Lordships’ House is treated as an equal House. This principle has been established beyond any doubt whatever, and I therefore find it quite unacceptable that whoever is speaking from our Front Bench would not take that view on this subject. I am sorry to say that.
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Lord Eatwell: The noble Lord and I are both professional economists and therefore we have disagreement built into our DNA. The role of the Treasury Select Committee in another place is special in this case.