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Financial Services Bill

My Lords, I will speak to the remuneration clauses together. The noble Lord has spoken to Amendment 108, which affects Clause 9. It is perhaps as well that we are dealing with these remuneration clauses in wash-up as I had envisaged that we would have several interesting and lengthy debates on the clauses had we discussed them in an ordinary Committee. I hold no candle for bankers’ bonuses but I share the very real concerns that the financial services sector and others have raised about the powers in Clause 11 in particular, which, inter alia, have no parliamentary oversight. An excess of regulatory zeal when implementing these powers—and, indeed the disclosure regulations under Clause 9—could be damaging to the UK. I shall not labour the point but say merely that whatever Government are in power after May will have to monitor how these powers are used and their impact on the international competitiveness of our financial services sector. Clauses 9 to 11 would, I believe, benefit from the sunset clause that the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, has tabled, and to which I hope she will speak in a moment. On an ordinary Committee day, the noble Baroness’s amendment would have received our enthusiastic support. The clauses would also have benefited from the report after three years, proposed by the amendment we had tabled, but that amendment has fallen by the wayside. I turn to the amendments tabled by the Government. We of course have no problem with Amendments 108 and 109, given that we tabled similar amendments in the first instance to which the Minister had added his name. Indeed, the Marshalled List still shows that that is the case as regards Amendment 109, although not Amendment 108. It is right that all the regulations made under Clause 9, not just the first, are subject to the affirmative procedure.