Financial Services and Markets Bill
5:00 pm
Lord Donaldson of Lymington (Crossbench)
The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, knows far more than I do about this. However, I know quite a lot about the bank ombudsman scheme and people do not have trial runs in front of the ombudsman. One may think that they would, but they do not. Furthermore, there is no doctrine of precedent. The operation is much more like that of a mediator. Indeed, as I understand it, in practice the banking ombudsman used to issue a draft award, so to speak, so that the complainant would know what would happen if he pursued the matter and usually that settled the issue one way or the other. The answer is that it works, although intellectually that may be a little surprising.