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Financial Services Bill

My Lords, we shall not oppose the Minister's amendments, although we are always wary about statutes overriding the need to keep information confidential. That will have to be a debate for another day. We shall also not oppose Clause 12 standing part of the Bill because we agree with the principle that banks ought to prepare living wills. However, I should place on record our concerns about Clause 12, because we shall not have the opportunity to debate the several amendments that we had tabled. We had been advised that this clause was not actually necessary to enable the work currently being undertaken under the auspices of the FSA’s requirements for resolution and recovery plans. The sheer breadth of the new powers and the fact that they can be used by the FSA to go way beyond the large banks at which the clause is clearly aimed in the first instance has concerned other parts of the financial services industry. We are less than clear about the role of the Treasury in these new powers and we do not understand why the use of the powers is mandatory for all time. The Government normally pray in aid flexibility by using "may" for drafting requirements, but they have drafted these new powers in the "must" form. The sunset clause proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, in Amendment 336 applied also to Clause 12 and I regret that we shall not have the opportunity to include that in this Bill. This underlines the importance of the Government of the day, whoever they are, keeping the impact of this sweeping clause under review. What is right for today may not be right in a few years’ time.