Dame Angela Eagle
MP for Wallasey · Labour · United Kingdom
“The Kremlin increasingly relies on proxy organisations to pursue its objectives, seeking to undermine our security while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. The so-called GRU Volunteer Corps is a clear example of that approach. It is not an independent force or a loose collection of volunteers.”
“This Government have introduced support for the Jewish communities who have been threatened and directly targeted by IRGC proxies. Just a couple of days ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced an extra £250 million for policing to ensure that we can support and protect our Jewish communities.”
“I will move on to the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right. The IMCR has publicly claimed seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities and to Persian-language media, including the antisemitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March.”
“We expect platforms to act responsibly and not to provide space for state threat-linked activity, propaganda or recruitment. We will be keeping a close eye on that, as well as liaising with social media companies to tell them about how this law impacts them.”
“The IRGC Quds Force and the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, together with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, form the Iranian intelligence apparatus. As a key component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, the IRGC is answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader.”
“It provides a targeted and proportionate means of disrupting those involved in foreign power threat activity based on the recommendations of Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of state threat legislation. To answer the hon.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,924 lines we hold for Dame Angela Eagle, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 32 of 119.
“We need a system that is not fragmentated and that is focused relentlessly on output, and where there is cross-departmental working and proper funding, as well as data sharing, so that we can crack down on something that all of us want to see driven out of our system.”
“After what I thought was quite a consensual debate, it is slightly unworthy of the Minister to resort to those comments in the week when there has been an inspectorate report about the misogyny, behaviour and culture of a lot of the police force. That needs to be reformed so that all members of our communities, whatever their age, gender or ethnicity, can trust the police; we all want to see that. Will the Minister admit that so-called woke policing is not an issue in fraud? The issue is fragmentation. Woke policing was not raised during the great number of Treasury Committee evidence sessions about the fraud, so it was unworthy of him to make those points at the end of his speech.”
“My hon. Friend’s amendments are an extremely important part of the debate, and I hope that the Government accept them. I should point out that when I sat on the Treasury Committee several iterations ago, we held an inquiry about free access to cash. We got agreement that all machines that charge for withdrawals should say so up front rather than right at the end. Although that transformed some of the problems, we are now discussing access to cash itself. It is funny how these things evolve but the issues remain the same.”
“The Minister is reasonably new to his post, but will he look at the Treasury Committee’s report on fraud, which contains a great deal of very practical things the Government could do to crack down on what is a growing problem? Everybody recognises that the anti-fraud authorities—the people who are trying to fight this—are very fragmented, there is no co-ordination across the piece and there is very little enforcement of the laws that are already there. That is why fraud is a growing problem—the rewards are so fantastic and the risks that fraudsters take are so miniscule that no fraudster is ever put off by the thought that they might get caught.”
“The Home Secretary has come to the House today and announced to us that the immigration system is broken. Can she tell us who has been in power for the last 12 years?”
“We have to keep a very close eye and watch this space to see how it evolves. Will the Minister give us an impression of whether the clause is evolutionary enough for his purposes in that rapidly changing environment? Might he want to change it through some later piece of legislation? Finally, we all know how much energy is used in the creation of Bitcoin. I confess myself ignorant about whether the creation of other non-fungible tokens is as energy intensive as the creation of Bitcoin. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten us. There is a green side to the issue as well.”
“Will the Minister give us a little more flavour on how he sees the evolution of this area? Does the clause give him enough powers to go with that evolution, or will we need to legislate again as the landscape changes? It is clear that we have to avoid the potential harm of allowing consumers to think that all digital coins are somehow the same. We know what Bitcoin is, and do not need to spend much time talking about it. We would not want to give people the impression that it is safe to indulge in investing in it. At the same time, both sides of the Committee realise that digital payment systems and coins are a huge and rapidly developing area that national Governments must get a grip on. That is why we all welcome the fact that the Bank of England is looking at launching its own non-fungible token, or whatever we want to call it.”
“I presume we will have some agreements—there has been a slow start. How can Parliament keep an appropriate eye on the philosophy behind the agreements, and the way in which they are going, as we diverge more from our closest partner?”
“Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn said, we are constrained by the fact that a great deal of our financial services activity happened within the EU. I suspect that the divergence is likely to become greater over time. What does the Minister think would constitute a timely attempt by Government to ensure proper parliamentary scrutiny of these things? Aside, that is, from Parliament potentially debating 50 pages of extremely technical statutory instruments. We know that the Treasury Committee will have a say, but some of the changes negotiated in these agreements with other countries may have important impacts on consumer rights, and larger number of Members of Parliament might want a say on them. Perhaps the Minister could say how he envisages the process going forward.”
“Until we left the EU, much of the negotiation on the financial directives that were promulgated went on within the European Commission. The UK had a great deal of influence over how those directives were negotiated, but it did not always win out; for example, the markets in financial instruments directive was a cause of some consternation for our financial services, because it did not fit with our kind of plan. We were always the country with the largest financial services sector, and were mostly likely to be impacted by agreements and compromises that did not clearly represent our best interests. We can now hope to move back towards that position, if we can come to an agreement. However, as my hon.”
“I want to focus on parliamentary scrutiny of these changes. They are quite technical, but they could be very important, including for consumers. If we do not get them right, they could have unintended consequences for financial stability and so on, because of the range of agreements under discussion. One assumes that those negotiating the agreements have a reasonable model of what they want to achieve, but that will also be the case for those with whom we are negotiating. The context is about gaining an advantage in the international competition for financial services. Indeed, both Front Benchers have hinted at that. If we are looking for a competitive advantage and growth, that kind of struggle for an advantage has obvious implications.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. Flattery will, of course, get him everywhere. Given the nature of that complex negotiation, might it be possible for him to undertake to give the Treasury Committee a heads-up on progress before agreements are made, so that we can try to ensure that we can encompass appropriate consideration in our heavy workload?”
“If something similar were to happen in this context, it could be even more serious and even more costly. I broadly support the aims of clause 24, but would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on how the problems and the bad effects in the energy market caused by the regulator’s misguided attempts to prove that there was competition—the trap of thinking that competition is just about the number of firms—can be avoided in this context.”
“I approve completely of having a competitiveness and effective competition analysis duty being attached to the regulators, and for them to report on it annually, which would allow us to see how much they are taking account of it. I would also like them to be thinking about financial inclusion, but that comes later in our proceedings. Will the Minister tease out a little for the Committee how he thinks the regulator can go about discharging that duty safely? We have seen some of the carnage caused by bad regulation in the energy sector, where a superficial view of competition has led to problems in that market, with companies collapsing. There is an obsession with the idea that competition is about the number of firms, whether or not they are sound.”
“Such greenwashing would move us away from meeting the target. Not only would it be to the detriment of consumer interests; it would squeeze out more genuine activities, firms and investment if it were allowed to be too prevalent.”
“Will there be the potential for people to think, “We’ll put everything off until closer to 2050,” because the “have regard” has been replaced with an end-date output target? Can the Minister justify why the Government thought that was the best approach? When regulation is being refocused on net zero, there will be those who wish to greenwash what they are doing—I will use that phrase; the Minister understands what it means—in order to continue to attract investment and piggyback on the good will of people who wish this change to happen when, in the case of those companies, it is not happening. I suspect there is a little bit of that going on at the moment. How does the Minister envisage enforcement mechanisms and proper regulation being put in place to ensure that greenwashing is not going on everywhere?”
“It is very important that, through these clauses, the Government have agreed to incorporate the legislative target of reaching net zero by 2050 into this part of financial services law. However, they have amended it by replacing what was there before—the “have regard to sustainable growth”—with the target. Is that the right way to go about it? By getting rid of that “have regard”, do we lose an opportunity to make progress, rather than just focusing on a future output? That is not a philosophical question; it is a practical one. Why have the Government decided to replace the “have regard”, rather than enhance it? Will the Minister reassure us that, in the context of having to retool the way we do almost everything in all our infrastructure, we could not have gone with both?”
“That will have to be done through public-private partnerships, investment to lead the market in areas where there is market failure and investment in innovation in financial services to help to provide that investment, but also through proper regulation, which is what these clauses are about. All those things have to be done in a timely way to create the circumstances for realising all the capital investment potential that will be needed to make this change happen, especially in established economies with old infrastructures, which are often the largest emitters of carbon, as it happens. All of that has to be done virtually in parallel, so that we can try to reach these important targets.”
“Again, there is largely agreement about the aims of clauses 25 and 26. We are on the cusp of a complete transformation in the way our economies have to work. Sometimes, I think we do not quite understand the extent of the transformation that will be needed and the speed at which it will have to be done, given that we are so behind in our attempts to reach net zero and avoid catastrophic climate change. It really is the last few hours, in terms of the biodiversity and climate stability of the Earth, for us to be able to do this. The scale of the required transformation is mind-boggling. Virtually every piece of infrastructure in existence in our society will have to be transformed.”
“In other words, the cost-benefit analysis of whether the measure is an appropriate reaction might be in the balance. Will the Minister say a little more about how he perceives the power being used and what “exceptional circumstances” are? We would still like to see what the intervention power that the Minister keeps talking about would actually look like. He has not come forward with the wording of it. Today, we will be halfway through the Committee proceedings on the Bill, and past the time when it may be relevant. Will he bring that wording back on Report, or will we see it while we are still in Committee?”
“I have a few questions. The measure is sensible, but at the same time, it can be read as being quite sinister. Perhaps it depends on how the power will be used. The past is not filled with massive numbers of examples of the regulator falling out with the Treasury or the Bank of England, so the measure seems rather like a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The powers are to be used in exceptional circumstances, but those circumstances are not really defined; the Minister’s comment on that would be interesting. If the measure is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, does it risk giving the impression that regulation in this country is not independent and can be overridden when that suits a Government, rather than when that is in the public interest? Might this compromise outsiders’ views of how our system is regulated?”
“After all, there are millions of them, and the dynamic of the market structures we have at the moment is moving provision away from people on lower incomes.”
“I can tell the Minister—I am sure he has come across this in his own constituency—that many people who exist on very tight incomes, and who really have to budget, shy away from having basic accounts because they cannot afford to go into deficit and be charged a fee. That would destroy all their very careful balancing. This issue is particularly important for people who are on benefits and have them paid into a bank account at a set time, but who have bill payments coming out at a different time. I would really appreciate it if the Minister would think profoundly about how the problem can be solved, so that our financial services sector can get to a stage where it can make profit—a modest profit perhaps, but some profit—out of dealing with people on much more modest incomes.”
“I think that a “have regard” that prompts thought about structures and, perhaps, about the regulation of some simpler products that could be made available is a really important part of addressing that market failure. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, I am worried that the Minister will say that we have consumer protections in place. This is not about those who are currently consuming the products; it is about those who cannot even afford to have basic bank accounts, those who have to go to money lenders because they are in such precarious circumstances, and those who pay the poverty premium because accessing financial services costs so much more as a percentage of their overall income than it costs someone on a higher income.”
“Those were throttled out of existence because the industry did not really want them to succeed, and what has happened since—not by anyone’s design but by the dynamics of the way the market works—means that there is less and less available for those who have small amounts of income because the products are simply not profitable in the current structure of our retail financial services. This is a systemic issue that needs to be solved, because we need a financial services retail sector that serves everybody. We do not have one, and we are getting to a stage where market dynamics make it less and less likely that we will have one; they are actually excluding more people.”
“There is some truth in that, but there is also truth in the fact that the opacity of the price mechanisms and the complexity of the products that the industry comes up with make it confusing, and of course that increases the cost base, which excludes more low-paid people. A previous Administration that I might have been a member of tried to address the issue with stakeholder products that were meant to be much simpler with very up-front but capped pricing that everybody would understand.”
“It is also very focused on its distribution networks and not so much on the customer. Retail financial products have often focused on the relationship between those who introduce products and those who sell them on to the ultimate customer, often with quite rewarding levels of sales commission. The bad end of that kind of financial services model is that we get a structure that is not focused enough on consumers, and a range of ever-increasing complexity that costs more and excludes more people who might be on basic incomes. Over time, the dynamic of that structure means that the financial services sector gets more and more complex, more and more focused on the distribution networks, and less and less focused on the end customer. One understands that when the industry starts complaining about the lack of financial education.”
“It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, whose comments I wholeheartedly support. I suspect there will be widespread support among Committee members for the objectives of her amendment. Perhaps the Minister will argue that a “have regard” to financial inclusion is the wrong way to go about it, but I would argue that not having these things in mind when an industry is being regulated can make a situation worse. We know the level of financial exclusion because my hon. Friend mentioned the figures. I do not intend to go over all that, but essentially what we have—this has developed because of the way the market works—is a retail financial services sector that is very focused on a set of quite complex products.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend. I will wrap up. Given that this is a systemic issue, a “have regard” is the best way of dealing with it. I hope that the Minister will think carefully about that and about how it might help us arrest the dynamic that is taking financial services away from people on modest incomes, and making it less and less profitable for the industry to serve them, leaving them much diminished in their attempts to engage appropriately in our society in ways that many people take for granted, such as by having a credit card and bank account, or being able to conduct electronic cash transfers and so forth.”
“When I talk to consumer stakeholders and groups, there is certainly a view that the balance is not right at the moment, which is why I am so supportive of what my hon. Friend has said from the Front Bench. We have to be able to demonstrate, in a transparent way, that meetings that may be confidential for very good reasons are not something else. Will the Minister give us some ideas about how consumer representation in these technical panels can be properly shown to be robust and how transparency can be improved, given the fluid context for a lot of these decisions and future structures?”
“I support the position of my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn. Given the transfer of powers from Brussels to the UK and the fact that a lot of the current structure is up for discussion and potential change—although we hope it will not all change at once—there is bound to be much more interest in the regulators’ decisions for lobbying purposes than there would be normally in any given year. That level of interest will last until the system settles down into whatever its future tracks will be. In those circumstances, the regulators must be able to demonstrate robustly that there has been no kind of industry or regulatory capture via some of these panels, and that consumer interest has been properly represented.”
“As a member of the Treasury Select Committee and—for an all too brief time—acting Chair, I am also very interested to hear what the Minister has to say about this.”
“We need to have some objectivity if their work is to have credibility and deserves to be taken into account in regulators’ decision making.”
“It is important that regulators think about proportionality for the industry itself. Also, in an industry where all the costs are likely to be passed on to the consumer, it is extremely important that it can be done sensibly, properly and in a way that stands up to scrutiny, and I hope that the scrutiny would be there for others to look at. One often comes up against quite blank walls when trying to interrogate Government cost-benefit analyses, and one ends up going down dead ends and not really understanding how the judgments about the costs have been made, so the better we can get at the science in whatever context, the better for everybody. It is important that clause 42 exists to try to provide balance and transparency about who will be on the panels, because we would not want them to be captured by particular parts of the structure.”
“It is odd hearing the Minister’s response before we have spoken to the amendments. I just want to make a few comments about cost-benefit analysis, which is not an easy science. I am an avid observer of the Government’s attempts to do a cost-benefit analysis. Let us put it this way: it often leaves plenty to be desired when we start looking at how the Government have decided to cost the effect of their legislative suggestions, and we go into the detail of it and see how back-of-an-envelope and dubious some of it is. I do not want to sound too sarcastic, but perhaps if the CBA panels get to be good, they could teach the Government a thing or two about how to do their own analyses. It is often a difficult but desirable thing to try to estimate the cost of particular suggestions, especially when regulators impose them in other areas.”
“T7. It is widely acknowledged that public spending cuts impact most on women. The Chancellor has signalled that he will seek such cuts in an effort to close the £40 billion hole his predecessor recklessly blew in the public finances. Will the Equalities Minister now undertake to publish an equality impact assessment on the 17 November autumn statement, as required by the Equality Act 2010?”
“It seems to me that the ministerial code has been honoured more in the breach than in the observance in this last period of multiple Governments and the clown show that we have seen operating on the Government Benches. The Minister says that the new Prime Minister is going to appoint an independent adviser on the ministerial code. Can he give this House an assurance that when that appointment is made—we expect it to be soon—there will be a proper investigation into the behaviour of the Home Secretary in her last iteration, before she had her six days off?”
“I would be less worried if, as the hon. Member for Glenrothes said, we are just taking off an EU flag and sticking on a Union Jack, but I assume the Minister is taking these powers because he wants to use them. Will he set out in his comments on clause 1 precisely how he expects that to happen?”
“Will the Minister give the Committee an idea of how the wide-ranging power to amend a large amount of legislation that has been on the statute book for many years will be done in a way that reassures all our constituents that we have the right balance between consumer protection and consumer rights on the one hand and our financial services industry and the way that it operates on the other? How will Parliament get to look at this? It is possible to argue that clause 1 would allow Parliament to be run over roughshod, without providing proper scrutiny, so will the Minister indicate how it will work in practice? How does he propose the powers will be exercised? What can Parliament do if we perceive that an issue that has been overlooked in all the technocracy impacts on our constituents? We need to ensure we have proper accountability.”
“A great deal of work was done to achieve that, but a great many mistakes were made during the process in the drafting, the interpretation and the way in which powers were onshored in areas where we have not legislated directly for 47 years. This is a great accumulation of technical, but also extremely important, legislation that impacts on our constituents’ experience of everyday life as consumers and on how they use financial services and insurance, banking and savings products. If we get it wrong, there can be a great deal of detriment to our constituents.”
“Good morning, Dame Maria. It is a great honour to be on a Bill that you are chairing—I think it is our first time together in this iteration. The Opposition do not have a problem with the principle of repealing some of the EU legislation, but I rise to invite the Minister to give us more detail on precisely how he envisages the wide-ranging power in clause 1 will be exercised in practice. I speak as a former member of the European Statutory Instruments Committee, which did a great deal of work in sifting all of the EU legislation to onshore it ahead of Brexit, including all the legislation covered by the Bill. We sat regularly and looked at thousands upon thousands of pieces of EU legislation, which we brought onshore ahead of Brexit.”
“It was not the most fascinating thing I have ever done in the House, but it was one of those things that one has to do, or the statute book ends up in a right mess.”
“I wonder about the sequencing. There is a list in schedule 1 of all the legislation that applies to financial services, lock, stock and barrel. The sifting Committee had oversight of that when we onshored it. Once the schedule is law, it does not all disappear at once, does it? Surely, we keep it there and have a look at things that might cause difficulty and at where we may wish to diverge.”
“I apologise for intervening, but Standing Committee is the time when we can ask detailed questions, so I hope the Minister does not mind my coming back in. [ Interruption. ] I think there was a Siri outburst there.”
“As a member of the Treasury Committee, I can say that we are trying to get a handle on the scrutiny that will be applied as regulators come to look at these things. One assumes that they will announce that they are reviewing a particular area, and they may come up with some divergences. Regulators have their way of doing things, Government Ministers want particular things, and sometimes Parliament has a different view, particularly if something affects our constituents in unanticipated ways. Given the structure that the Bill sets out, I am trying to get a handle on how Parliament’s view on an issue would be put forward.”
“Clearly, Pepper v. Hart applies when a reassurance is given by a Minister. That is partly why we ask questions in these proceedings. We wish to have on record reassurances about the meaning of the statute in front of us, how the Government interpret it, and what the Government’s intent was. If there is any subsequent doubt about that, the record can be looked at under the provisions of Pepper v . Hart.”
“I want to register some concern and get the Minister’s reassurances on the record about what are very broad-ranging powers for the Treasury, which are then subject to constraints. Was it necessary to have such broad-ranging powers? It is not a good way of approaching things unless there are no other options. Is the Minister worried that, over time, those constraints might loosen and the broad powers will remain? The dynamic of this kind of structure is what worries me, rather than the balance that he has explained the Government have currently set.”
“I wonder whether the Minister could be a bit more forthcoming about when the amendment will be available, because that will give us a fuller picture of the Government’s decisions on the delicate balance that must be struck. Bearing in mind that the Committee sits for two weeks and at the end of today we will have had 25% of the Public Bill Committee proceedings on this Bill, I hope that the Minister will not publish the amendment at the end of next week.”
“That kind of business is attractive if it is safe; it is not attractive if it is unsafe. The Minister ploughed through his speech about all the technicalities of the shift away from EU-regulated systems and about how onshoring back to the UK will be done. Given how large our banking, financial services and insurance sector is, we are clearly at systemic risk if we get this wrong. We have to get the balance right between ensuring that any new regimes are transparent and safe enough to be hosted in our country. The Minister took us through some of the technical changes, but will he reassure us about the transparency and safety issues in the new regime that I have hinted at?”
“Clearly, those tasked with ensuring that that does not happen again—those in the Bank of England, the prudential regulators and the FCA who have a handle on this, as well as the international regulators trying to set standards—have to be very aware of how such regulation might change and effect firms in the markets. However, there will always be a push in these markets to move the boundaries towards something less opaque and more profitable for those doing business, hoping that the risks can be left somewhere else. When risks crystallise, however, they are left on the balance sheets of nations that have to cope with cleaning up the mess. So, while I approve of modernising such regimes, little alarm bells go off in my mind when I think about attracting more such business.”