Clause 1 - Financial Services and Markets Act 2000: regulated activities
Regulation of Financial Services (Land Transactions) Bill
11:00 am
Ivan Lewis (Economic Secretary, HM Treasury; Bury South, Labour)
I will not take the hon. Lady's advice about sending the Prime Minister a memo advising him on his future speeches. That would not be a particularly good career move. I suggest that she should not send her leader those kind of memos either.
To be serious, the hon. Lady raises a number of points. The first is about timing. Hon. Members cannot have it both ways. In debates such as this, they quite rightly say, ''You need to ensure that you get this right.'' That must be the priority, but once the legislation is passed, there will be an appropriate and proper consultation process, and when that process has arrived at a final conclusion—obviously, as quickly as possible—the regulations will be issued. So, I do not make any apologies for ensuring that the consultation process is handled properly.
The hon. Lady also asked about legal advice. The Chief Secretary's response was right. The FSA will determine the advice rules that govern measures in relation to these products. It is not for Ministers on their feet in a Committee such as this to establish those rules; Parliament has set up the FSA to make such judgments.
The hon. Lady also raises the question of cost and I will help her with that inquiry. The costings in the published RIA remain estimates. The reason for that is that they are derived from figures published by the FSA in relation to the existing mortgage regime. They are based on future projections of market size, which have left considerable room for dynamic market growth. The precise nature of the regime that will apply to home reversion plans and ijara products will not be finalised until the FSA has consulted on the detailed rules. That is the reason why the calculations are basically estimates.
I say again to the hon. Lady that the Financial Services Authority is obliged as a matter of course to keep all such measures under constant review with regard to proportionality. That is central to the responsibilities that Parliament laid on the FSA. Therefore, it would make little sense to isolate individual measures, such as the ones in the Bill, and insist that they are subject to annual parliamentary scrutiny. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, ironically, the prohibitive cost of the sort of approach that seeks to minimise the cost of regulation would have a perverse effect. On that basis, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.