Clause 190
Banking Bill
5:45 pm
Ian Pearson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Dudley South, Labour)
I beg to move amendment No. 20, in clause 190, page 94, line 7, at end insert—
‘(4A) Subsection (4)—
(a) overrides a contractual or other requirement to keep information in confidence, and
(b) is without prejudice to any other power to disclose information.’.
The clause enables the authorities involved in the regulation of payment systems to obtain and share information effectively. Subsection (4) allows the Bank to disclose information obtained under the clause to the Treasury and the FSA, and their international counterparts—the European Central Bank and the Bank for International Settlements. It also gives the Bank the right to publish information obtained under powers conferred by the clause.
The amendment inserts an additional provision to ensure that the Bank may share information obtained under the clause with those authorities, notwithstanding any contractual or other confidentiality obligations in place, and without prejudice to other disclosure powers. The Committee will be aware that the gathering and sharing of information between domestic authorities and their colleagues in overseas authorities plays an important role, and will play an increasingly important role in informing and co-ordinating international regulatory activity, both to pre-empt and to address problems in financial markets. Similarly, the sharing of information plays a fundamental role in the framework governing the formal oversight of payment systems.
Therefore, it is vital that the Bank of England should be able to share information obtained under this section, notwithstanding any contractual or other confidentiality requirements, in the interests of financial stability, among other things. Accordingly, the amendment is appropriate in order to provide a statutory gateway for the Bank of England to share information.
It is appropriate to note that similar gateways are available to other public authorities—for example, the FSA and the Competition Commission—which may, in some circumstances, disclose confidential information without seeking the consent of the person from whom the information was obtained.
It is important to note that the provision means that the common law of confidentiality can be overridden. However, the power will, of course, be exercised by the Bank of England in a way that is compatible with the safeguards set out in the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998. The amendment is equivalent to the provision in clause 224(3), which relates to information that is relevant to the financial stability of an individual financial institution, or one or more aspects of the individual systems of the UK, which may be shared with the FSA or the Treasury. I commend the amendment to the Committee.