Clause 187
Banking Bill
5:30 pm
John Pugh (Shadow Minister, Treasury; Southport, Liberal Democrat)
May I ask about subsection (1)(c) and the words “consider any representations made”? I assume that there is a narrow reading and a broad reading of those words. Clearly, we are judging people against a code of conduct and the code of conduct can obviously be broken to a major or minor degree, and when it is broken people can simply judge whether there are extenuating circumstances. However, the words “any representations” seem to go a bit further than that. Again, I am inspired by the hon. Member for Wellingborough and his comment that a representation that might be relevant is that it is an inappropriate thing to do given the state of commercial markets, and so on. I had a very satisfying answer from the Minister about appeals, but the other issue is discretion and how it is used, and I want to know whether the Bank of England, in receiving representations, has to concentrate simply on the narrow business of whether the code of conduct has been breached and the operator is bang to rights on a very narrow reading of it, or whether the Bank can receive from the payments agency broader representations, such that it may be inappropriate, given the state of the market, to act at that particular moment.