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Banking Bill

This amends one of the FSA’s regulatory objectives as set out in Section 3 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. At present—we discussed this earlier today—the market-confidence objective is, "““maintaining confidence in the financial system””." That is all very well but it assumes that the system merits confidence and there is nothing in the FSA’s objective which requires the FSA to ensure that the financial system is worthy of confidence. Only if that is achieved should the FSA seek to maintain confidence in the system. I am indebted to an Adam Smith Institute pamphlet on bank regulation for the inspiration behind this amendment. I hope the Minister can see that the reworded objective would at least more honestly deal with what the FSA should be trying to do. The current wording of the objective does not give a clear indication of what the FSA should be doing. I beg to move.