Pat McFadden
MP for Wolverhampton South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“In his review Alan Milburn considered that issue and said that, “the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years.” As I said earlier, 400,000 more people are in work this year than last year, and the number of young people in employment is up since the election.”
“Since our last DWP questions, both Alan Milburn and the Pensions Commission have published their respective interim reports on young people and on the current state of saving for retirement. I look forward to receiving their final reports later in the year.”
“As Alan Milburn pointed out in his recent report, the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years. There are 400,000 more people in work than last year. The number of young people in employment is up by 74,000 since the election.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman and send him commiserations for whatever has left him reliant on his crutches today. I am happy to congratulate the businesses he mentioned in his constituency. He raises a serious point: it is important not only to come up with the right policy, but to make it simple for businesses to use.”
“My hon. Friend is right, and I thank Cardiff football club for being a partner. We are supporting nearly 1 million young people and creating up to half a million opportunities for jobs and training.”
“We are making strong progress on expanding youth hubs, with around 130 already in operation across Great Britain. In March, I announced the locations that we want to open in this year, and I have just announced a further 180 locations for the following two years.”
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“The reason for all the tax rises is simple: the Tories have become the party of high taxation because they are the party of low growth. In the 11 years in which they have been in office, economic growth has averaged just 1.8%. In the previous decade, it averaged 2.3%.”
“Fifty-five years on, I hope that the UK Government and the Welsh Government manage to reach agreement on securing the safety of coal tips for the future. I thank hon. Friends for raising the matter. The Budget, like all Budgets, covered many things, but the stand-out feature was the Chancellor’s admission that taxes are set to rise to their highest levels since the early 1950s—higher than under Norman Lamont, higher than under Ken Clarke, higher than under Denis Healey, higher than under any of the Chancellor’s predecessors. Corporation tax, personal allowance freezes, national insurance, council tax—there is one tax rise after another. A new analysis today shows that the combination of them is set to mean £3,000 more in taxes per household than when the Prime Minister came into office.”
“Others raised continuing issues with universal credit and made the point that the changes made yesterday will benefit only a minority of those affected by the cut of £20 a week that was implemented a few weeks ago. There were also contributions on artificial intelligence, the return of inflation, bank closures and many other issues. Several Welsh colleagues raised coal tip safety. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) rightly reminded us that it has been just over 55 years since the tragedy in Aberfan. I remember visiting the graveyard in Aberfan as a young man with my friend Huw Lewis, the former Assembly Member for the constituency: I will never forget the pictures of children on the graves, lovingly cared for and frozen in time forever.”
“It is a pleasure to respond to today’s debate on behalf of the Opposition. Although the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is not in his place, I begin by congratulating him on becoming a father for the first time. He would not tell us his age, but if he is an older dad, as I was, I suspect that he is learning the reason that people have children in their 20s and 30s. That is a lesson that we learn when we have them a little bit older in life, so I give him my full solidarity and best wishes on his new baby. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to the debate, which were wide-ranging. Several hon. Members talked about the need for business rates reform in the longer term, which the Opposition very much support.”
“The economic legacy of this Chancellor will be a country on the path of low growth and high taxation, but his political legacy will be as the man who buried forever the Tories’ reputation as a low-tax party.”
“The long-term effect of this lack of growth is far greater than the impact of the pandemic. When we look beyond the huge fall in GDP last year, due to the pandemic, and the bounce back from it this year and next, the growth picture does not change. The OBR is predicting economic growth averaging about 1.5% between 2024 and 2026. It is that low growth which creates the projections of real wages barely rising in the coming years. In his dreams, the Prime Minister is Winston Churchill; in his rhetoric, the Chancellor is Margaret Thatcher; but in its actions, this Government is Ted Heath. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister have trapped the country in a vicious circle of low growth, rising inflation, stagnating incomes and rising taxes.”
“If the hon. Member reads the OBR report, he will find that it says very clearly that the effect of the pandemic is smaller in the long run than the effect of the low growth over which his party has presided for more than a decade. As I was saying, in the decade before the Conservatives came to office, growth averaged 2.3%. Let us look at what the difference between those rates means to people. The difference, added up over the years, is worth £9,000 a year to every household in the country, and from the Exchequer’s point of view, the difference would be £30 billion a year more to fund our public services. It is that more than anything—that appalling record on economic growth—which has forced the Chancellor to raise taxes. The British people are being forced to pay the price of the Government’s long-term economic failures.”
“It is that failure that gave rise to yesterday’s Budget and the tax burden being imposed on the country by this Chancellor and this Government.”
“On the Labour Benches, we want to work with business, not treat it as a scapegoat for every problem that comes along. We want a fair deal for the workers in business, with good pay and decent conditions. We want to support wealth creation every bit as much as we support fair wealth distribution. We want to invest in the skills and talents of all our people, whatever their circumstances, from the youngest age possible, and we will have a net zero plan that meets the challenge of the moment and gets the best possible economic and employment benefits for the country. That is a better plan than the high-tax, high-inflation, low-growth model that the Conservative party has been pursuing, not for two years, not for one year but for 11 long years.”
“There would be a big speech about how taxes now had to go up because we had to pay our way and could not borrow what we could not afford. And the reason for that would still be the Tories’ lamentable failure on economic growth. That is not a moral mission. It is just a Tory election plan, and it is one that has been funded by hard-working taxpayers. There is a better path. There is a better future and a different way, and that is to put our efforts into raising medium-term growth prospects and to get out of this bind of high inflation, high taxes and poor growth that 11 years of Conservative Government have left us in. That is the better path to prosperity and security. That is the path to ensuring that talent is used and to making the most of the UK’s potential.”
“And the Government have only just discovered the importance of early years education, a decade after taking a wrecking ball to Sure Start and setting back a good start in life for millions of children around the country. It is not just the fact that we have the highest taxes in living memory; it is that those taxes are not being used for any coherent long-term plan for the country. They are being used to firefight one issue after another as it momentarily occupies the mind of the Prime Minister. There is only one plan that the Chancellor has here, and it is as clear as day. It is to hold some money back in order to offer tax cuts before the next election. If that plan succeeded and the Tories won, what do we think would happen afterwards? We know what would happen.”
“It is not just our view that the Budget did not measure up. The CBI has said that it will not “do enough to transform the UK economy for a post-covid world”. The Federation of Small Businesses asked: “Is there enough here to deliver the Government’s vision for a low-tax, high-productivity economy? Unfortunately not.” The Government ditched their industrial strategy out of ideological spite. The transition plan for net zero produced just last week was a damp squib. One of the biggest challenges that we face is how to transform the heating in our homes, yet their plan would partially cover just one in 250 of the replacement boilers needed. The long-term reform of business rates, which several Conservative Members said they supported, has been ditched once again. Time after time it is ditched.”
“That is not only socially unjust; it is economically self-defeating, and that record on education is a major contributor to the weak, anaemic, stunted growth that has resulted in the tax levels we are seeing today. This was not a Budget written in a few weeks in the Treasury. These high taxes and stagnating household incomes are not the product of the short-term crisis through which we have been living. This was a Budget written over 11 long years. Where was the plan for growth? Where was the plan to back the best of British creativity and enterprise? Where was the plan to ensure that we succeed in the technologies of the future? Where was the plan to ensure that, when it comes to levelling up, it is people and the talents that they hold, not just bricks and mortar, that are at the heart of it?”
“What an appalling dereliction of duty to young people in this country. There can be no more short-sighted decision than to stop talent flourishing—to take away the platform from which dreams can be fulfilled. For people born without money or without means, education is the only way in which that can happen. It is the means by which people can change the circumstances into which they were born. It is the platform to ensure that the course of life is not dictated by the hand that they were dealt at birth. Yet, for 11 years, this Government have neglected it. Then, when they were presented with a catch-up plan to help children to recover from the education lost during the pandemic, they shredded it.”
“That is precisely the point I am making. The long-term growth trend makes a huge difference to the Government’s choices and their power to fund public services. In the face of that, what was remarkable about yesterday’s Budget was the total absence of any plan for economic growth, and nowhere is that clearer than in education. The Chancellor expects us to applaud a lap of honour where in a couple of years’ time, funding per pupil only just gets back to its 2010 level. Let us think about that for a moment: almost 15 years with no real increase in investment in the workforce of the future. A generation of schoolchildren will have gone through their whole education with fewer resources than their predecessors. How can the Government talk realistically about levelling up when their record is long-term neglect of educational opportunity?”
“Every single Member who spoke in this debate spoke with passion about their high streets, their constituencies and the small businesses within them.”
“Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) spoke of the thousands of jobs lost in the music and creative industries, and of the help given to business by the Welsh Labour Government. The hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) spoke thoughtfully about the importance of connectivity and the changing role of our high streets. The hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) spoke about how economic and consumer practices have changed through covid. My hon. Friends the Members for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) spoke about the crucial importance of the wedding industry and the spin-off industries it gives rise to. My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) spoke of his frustration, shared by many Members, of the baked-in variations in valuation, with no apparent process of redress or appeal.”
“It is a pleasure to respond to this debate, and I thank all hon. and right hon. Members for the contributions they have made. I may not be able to mention them all. My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) talked about the challenges small businesses face. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) talked with passion about her constituency and the importance of connectivity. She invited us all for a drink in Ye Olde White Harte, an offer I am very glad to take up. From the Government Benches, the hon. Members for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) and for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) took the St Augustine approach. They were all in favour of business rate reform, just not yet. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) spoke of the plight of the travel industry. My hon.”
“Time and again in Government, when they have needed to raise money, they have gone for VAT. We do not yet know what the conclusions of the business rate review will be, but the prospect of the VATman returning is certainly possible given the contributions that we have heard today.”
“That is why our proposal, in the motion before the House, sets out positive steps that will help businesses right now: a freeze on business rates; an increase in the threshold for small business rate reliefs; and a proposal that is fully costed and fully funded. The Government know that business rates need reform. That is why they launched a review 15 months ago, but where is it? Where are the conclusions? Where is the Chancellor’s plan on business rates? Has it not been published because he is fighting with No. 10 about it, as he is over climate change? Has he not published it because he is fighting with the Business Secretary, as he is on industrial support? But we did get a clue as to what the preference of Government Members is, because many Members went for the Tory party’s three favourite initials: VAT.”
“Our calls for reform have met with widespread support from the business community. UKHospitality says that the biggest cost danger in sight for the hospitality sector is the reintroduction of business rates from 2022. The Federation of Small Businesses said that business rates “hits firms before they’ve even made a pound in turnover.” The CBI said that business rates are “literally…a tax on investment”. The British Retail Consortium found that without a reduction in rates next year, 83% of retailers said that it was “very likely” or “certain” that they might have to close stores. The Institute for Family Business has also backed this call. In the short term, businesses need help.”
“I am happy to talk about our proposals and the hint we got on what the eventual outcome might be. We tabled this proposal because we want to support Britain’s businesses as they try to recover from the pandemic. Many physical retailers could not trade at all during the pandemic. Consumers changed their habits and went online. Our high streets were shuttered and closed. The problem of business rates is well known and has been for a long time: they are weighted against high streets; they are weighted on physical versus online businesses; and they create negative incentives for investment. If someone invests in their business, does the right thing and does their bit for the transition to a greener economy, their business rates actually go up. It is a 20th-century tax for a 21st-century economy.”
“When there are shortages on the shelves, blame business. We have heard far too much of that from the Conservative party in recent weeks and, because of that, it has forfeited its right to be called the party of business.”
“I cannot; I have to watch the clock. We put forward a plan both for the short term and the long term, but this is not just about business rates, is it? This is about the broader relationship between politics and business. The Opposition want a partnership with business to help the country to recover from the covid pandemic. We will not blame businesses for every shortage of workers or every shortage of goods. We will not use business as a weapon in ideological battles, as we saw throughout every day of the recent Conservative party conference. And we certainly will not go down the absurd road of trying to retrofit a justification for shortages and problems by claiming that they were part of some plan all along. When there is chaos at the pumps, blame business. When there is chaos at the ports, blame business.”
“Businesses will find, in today’s Labour party, a ready partner that wants to see them grow and see a fair deal for their employees; that wants to see both prosperity and security for the people who work in business; and that will work with business, not blame them for the failures and consequences of Government decisions. That is what this motion is about, that is what this argument is about, and that is the case we will continue to make.”
“I will not. And the Conservative party willingly gave that up by putting ideology in its place. When the Prime Minister said “f*** business”, some of us thought it was a quip. We did not expect to see it followed through by briefings on and off the record that business is part of the problem and not part of the solution. Any serious party of Government has to take wealth creation as seriously as it does wealth distribution. It has to celebrate entrepreneurs, not blame them. It has to champion creativity and innovation. It has to move its policies in line with economic change and the ceaseless process of technological change. That is what we on the Opposition side of the House are doing.”
“First, why has compensation been set at 80% of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme maximum of £86,000, not the full level? That is probably the main outstanding concern of LCF investors, who are grateful that compensation will come but who cannot understand the 80% cap given the manifest failures set out in Dame Elizabeth’s report. Are the Government completely fixed on this 80% figure, or is there any prospect of that being reconsidered?”
“I served on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which said that “a buck that does not stop with an individual stops nowhere.” That quote has been much used in the debate about this issue, which has raised sharply the limitations of collective accountability and the question of whether in this case the buck really stopped with anyone. Of course, most importantly of all, there is the issue of the distress and the financial loss to investors and the question of how they should be compensated. All of this has led to the Government stepping in with this Bill to authorise compensation up to a certain level for investors. Based on the amendment, I want to put a number of questions to the Minister arising from the Bill.”
“They include: the wholly deficient practices at the FCA that meant that hundreds of reports of harm were not acted on, which was described by Dame Elizabeth Gloster as an “egregious” failure of the FCA to fulfil its statutory duties; the fact that this failure allowed LCF to continue in operation for years longer than it might otherwise have, thereby multiplying the harm to investors; the reassurance at one point from the FCA that what was happening was not a scam; the impact of the halo effect in having a regulated firm selling unregulated products, leading unsuspecting investors to believe that these products were far safer than they actually were; the loss of a whistleblower’s letter three years before the firm’s collapse, and the damning conclusion from Dame Elizabeth Gloster that the loss of that letter probably did not make any difference, because the FCA was so dysfunctional that, even if it had not been lost, it would not have been acted on; the repeated failure to join the dots and the treating of each LCF transgression—for example, on its use of financial promotions—as an isolated incident, when instead it was a pattern of behaviour designed to use its regulated status to bolster confidence in unregulated products; and the public disagreement between Dame Elizabeth and the Governor of the Bank of England about the issues of responsibility and personal culpability.”
“I want to use the opportunity provided by the amendment to raise a few points, particularly about clause 1, and to put them to the Minister. I thank Dame Elizabeth Gloster and both the Treasury Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee for the work they have done on this issue. The issues covered by the Bill have been widely set out in debates on Second Reading and in Committee.”
“The hon. Member raises a very fair point. It has already been referenced in the debate that this is not just about amounts, but about the timescale, and we all want the Government and whoever is administering this scheme to be able to get on with it.”
“Having come up with this scheme, where do the Government now draw the line? How can we be sure this will not happen again? There are two aspects to this question. The first is the role of the regulator. The FCA is going through a transformation programme designed to ensure that changes are made to prevent a similar thing from happening in the future.”
“The right hon. Member raises a very fair point. If we pluck a sum of money out of the air, it could be a lot of money to one person and perhaps less to somebody else, depending on their wealth. Let me return to the questions for the Minister arising from the amendment and the Bill. The second is the important question of where the decision to compensate the LCF investors leaves investors in other firms where regulatory failure is alleged. Where has the bar now been set for future compensation in the event of regulatory failure? The taxpayer cannot stand behind every investment loss. Some investors will make money and some will lose. That is in the nature of a market economy. However, the question of compensation arises when there is a clear regulatory failure, because that is considered to be a different matter.”
“As covid has pushed more of our lives online, it is imperative that legislation keeps pace with the increased use of online scams that are designed to strip people of their money. It is becoming more and more difficult for consumers to ascertain the difference between a genuine approach and a scam approach. We in this House have a legislative duty to keep pace with what organised criminals are trying to do.”
“The second aspect to the question of how we can ensure that this does not happen again relates to legislative protections. This scam was promoted by a lot of online advertising. The online safety Bill is coming up, and at the moment paid-for advertising is excluded from that. Why should that be the case? Surely the LCF case shows that paid-for advertising must be included. As the Minister will be aware, there is a growing coalition behind the argument that the online safety Bill must offer greater protection against financial scams and fraud, and that is bound to be a major issue as the Bill goes through the House. That issue is important, because consumers are being targeted every day with adverts, text messages, emails, and phone calls geared either to obtaining their financial details, or promising get-rich-quick schemes.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. On how we can be sure that this will not happen again, and the transformation programme, it is to be expected that companies would go through such a programme, given the damning nature of Dame Elizabeth’s findings. There is also, however—and this is not just about this specific case—understandable public scepticism when a scandal happens, people talk about lessons being learned, there are some changes to management, and the organisation moves on. How do we ensure that, while understandable, such public scepticism is not justified in this case because something different is happening, and that we will not end up back here, some time in the future, debating another investment scam that was not spotted and acted on in time?”
“I am coming to the end of my remarks; I hope the hon. Gentleman does not mind. I leave the Minister with this: is it not better to try to stop people being ripped off in the first place, than to have to ask the taxpayer or, as in clause 2, members of pension schemes, to compensate people after such scams have already happened? I will leave it there, although I will later have a few remarks and questions about clause 2.”
“In my last contribution to the debates on this Bill, I want to thank the Minister and his colleague the Economic Secretary to the Treasury for their consideration of the points that have been raised throughout by hon. Members. I also thank the Clerks and the Bill team for their responses to inquiries. We will support the Bill because we want this compensation to be paid out, but I hope that the Minister will consider some of the questions we have raised about the nature of scams and the need to do more to protect consumers. Although this Bill will go through tonight, I have no doubt that consumer protection, frauds, scams and the amount of things happening online will be raised again when we debate the Online Safety Bill in the weeks and months to come.”
“What are the Minister and his colleagues doing to change the situation with regard to pensions advice? Finally, those accessing their pensions under the age of 55 are subject to a hefty tax charge, but sometimes people are persuaded to do this because they are advised that there is no tax charge and they will not have to pay any tax. They then find themselves not just victims of a scam but pursued by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. What can the Minister do to persuade HMRC to take account of the difference between someone acting on false information and someone knowing that they will incur a tax charge? I would be grateful if the Minister could address those questions before we finish.”
“The Select Committee on Work and Pensions has shown significant interest in the issue, and it has received estimates from the Pension Scams Industry Group that 40,000 people may have lost up to £10 billion since the pension freedoms were introduced in 2015. Thirdly, great fanfare was made of advice and guidance when the pension freedoms legislation was introduced, but take-up has been very low, and efforts by the Department to improve it have not radically changed the proportion of people accessing good advice. Without good advice, pension scheme members are left much more vulnerable to unscrupulous sales pitches or, alternatively, bad decisions that are clearly not in their interests but may be in the interests of the financial adviser advising them.”
“It leaves schemes with large numbers of members, many of whom have small pension pots—for example, those on auto-enrolment schemes—paying a significant proportion of the levy, even though they are run in a completely honest way that has never been near any kind of pension fraud. Have the Government considered a more proportionate way of raising such levies, to protect pension scheme members with very small pots? My second question is about the relationship between the greater pension freedoms in recent years and the risks of scams and financial fraud. The advent of these freedoms has resulted in a number of examples where unsuspecting pensioners have been persuaded to transfer their pensions in ways that were not in their interests or, even worse, that led to fraud and a loss of their hard-earned savings.”
“We have just had a short debate on an amendment that was largely focused on clause 1. Before we finish the Commons stages, I want to put a few questions to the Minister, mainly relating to clause 2 and pensions. We discussed some of these issues in Committee. Clause 2 imposes a levy on the pension schemes to pay for the consequences of the Dalriada case, which means that the pension fund compensation scheme has to raise what Ministers expect to be around £300 million. I have a few questions about that. My first question is about the flat-rate way of raising such levies.”
“Can the Minister explain why this power for endless rollover has been deemed necessary? Why, five years after the referendum, does the UK not have the necessary systems in place? How often does he expect to see this annual extension power used? As I said, this aspect of the statutory instrument is part of a pattern. I have stood in this room and similar rooms on this Corridor debating the same thing with regard to customs procedures, and we also saw it yesterday with regard to the clearance of goods. At what point did taking back control morph into not having controls at all, and not being able to consider applications? When will we ultimately get out of this holding pattern of the rollover of the status quo and actually put in place the controls that were envisaged five years ago when the country took this decision?”
“In other words, “We need to have this rollover because we can’t process the paperwork.” That is the financial equivalent of Lord Frost’s announcement yesterday of the unilateral setting aside of border controls on incoming goods. What the Government are doing through this instrument, and a number of similar ones, is empowering themselves in legislation to carry on what went before even in the absence of mutual agreements in the other direction and in recognition that their institutions do not yet have the capacity to consider the individual applications and approvals that would be necessary to do this one clearing house at a time. In the absence of that capacity, we have this catch-all rollover of the status quo, because we are openly admitting that cannot process the paperwork.”
“Clearing is very important; it is a firebreak in the system when large transactions take place. It is very important for the UK financial services sector and allows huge volumes of transactions to take place in this country. A temporary agreement on clearing was reached with the EU in the absence of any wider equivalence recognition on financial services last year. This instrument allows the Treasury to extend the transitional period for recognition of overseas CCPs indefinitely, but one year at a time. The reason for that is explained in paragraph 7.11 of the explanatory notes, which say that “because there are some CCPs, who submitted applications for recognition…that will likely be unable to receive equivalence and recognition under EMIR”— the relevant directive— “for a prolonged period”.”
“We could lend a bit more if only we didn’t have to hold all this capital against our balance sheet.” How alive is the Treasury to that kind of lobbying and how determined is the Treasury to resist it, particularly given the number of consultations going on in the financial sector, on all sorts of subjects, asking the sector what it would like to be changed in the wake of our withdrawal from the EU? Really, my question is about whether this is a purely technical transfer of administrative responsibility, or does it open the door to lower capital requirements and greater leverage, and therefore greater risk, for UK-regulated financial institutions? The second issue in the regulations is clearing services and the recognition of overseas central counterparties, known as CCPs, by the Bank of England.”
“That in many ways is a great strength, but it can be a vulnerability if the UK taxpayer is the ultimate backstop for the system. My first question to the Minister, therefore, is about whether, in giving these powers to the PRA, there is any policy intent to reduce the capital requirements on institutions. Banks will not openly lobby to put greater risk in the system. Instead, when they come knocking on the Minister’s door, they talk about competitiveness and say, “Can we just have this change? It would make us more internationally competitive.”
“That scenario left Governments and taxpayers—not only in this country, but in the United States, Ireland and a number of European countries—in the invidious position of having to bail out banks deemed too big to fail. The Basel rules were designed to avoid a repeat of that situation, make financial institutions more resilient and get taxpayers off the hook of bailing those institutions out, or to put it another way, and perhaps more bluntly, to deal with the problem of privatising the profits and nationalising the risks. As the Minister and I have often discussed in such debates, there is particular onus on the UK to have resilient institutions and good regulation in this sphere, because our banking and financial services sector is so large relative to the rest of our economy.”
“Some of those powers related to the capital requirements regulation, which was the EU’s instrument for implementing the Basel standards agreed in the wake of the financial crash of 2007 and 2008. Those Basel standards are important, because they required financial institutions to hold particular levels of capital buffer; stick to, at the very least, a minimum overall leverage requirement below which they could not fall; and have particular liquidity requirements. All that was designed to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis, when globally and systemically important banks were found to be holding too little capital, and to be overstretched when it came to leverage, and therefore to be unable to fund themselves when the crisis came.”
“Thank you for chairing the sitting, Mrs Murray. Just before I came here, I saw media reports that there is a Government reshuffle under way. There is an old Glasgow phrase referring to job insecurity. It talks about somebody’s jacket hanging on a shoogly nail. I genuinely hope that the Minister’s jacket is not hanging on a shoogly nail, and wish him well in whatever transpires over the rest of the day. The statutory instrument before us, as the Minister explained, is the legislative child of section 3 of the Financial Services Act, which we debated in the House last year. Under that Act, powers under certain EU directives were onshored to be allocated to UK-based regulators.”