Clause 173
Banking Bill
12:15 pm
David Gauke (Shadow Minister, Treasury; South West Hertfordshire, Conservative)
I have a brief question for the Minister on the subsection that he has amended, and we are grateful for his explanation for that amendment. My question relates to the circumstances in which the Treasury must consider any request by the operator of a recognised payment system for revocation of its recognition order. We have not tabled an amendment to the clause, but perhaps the Minister might help the Committee on this point. When the Treasury rejects any such request, does he consider it appropriate that it should give reasons for that rejection? Furthermore, is there anything more that he can say on whether an application for revocation would be successful, other than referring to the recognition criteria in clause 171? If a payment system saw its market share fall substantially, whether because of this regulatory regime or commercial factors, would that be the sort of matter that the Treasury would take into account, on which grounds it would be willing to grant revocation?
Would it ever be possible for a payment system to put in an application with a view to its coming into effect some months down the line? A payment system might be seeking to wind up its business. Rather than simply doing so and still finding itself a recognised system for these purposes and with various obligations on it, I wonder whether it could work with the Treasury and say, “We are going to cease performing at some time. We would like the revocation of the recognition order to coincide with the time we cease trading so there is not a huge overlap.” Would the Treasury be willing to work in a constructive manner with payment systems were those circumstances to arise? I do not know how likely that would be, but certainly in other sectors when a business winds up it wants to be able to work with the regulator to do that in as smooth and orderly a fashion as possible.