Clause 2 - Transitional amendments

Part of Financial Services and Markets Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:30 am on 25 October 2022.

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Photo of Angela Eagle Angela Eagle Labour, Wallasey 10:30, 25 October 2022

Obviously, this is an extremely complex area of technical regulation. It requires the regulators, alongside the Basel Committee and the international authorities regulating the flow of this kind of stuff, to operate effectively. If securitisation goes wrong or if markets begin to be opaque, with transparency going down, there can serious consequences for the countries in which such firms are based. That might also engage systemic threats to the banking structures of those countries. We have been through that before, and we know what happened when securitisation went wrong in the global financial crisis and what damage that caused to the global infrastructure.

Clearly, those tasked with ensuring that that does not happen again—those in the Bank of England, the prudential regulators and the FCA who have a handle on this, as well as the international regulators trying to set standards—have to be very aware of how such regulation might change and effect firms in the markets. However, there will always be a push in these markets to move the boundaries towards something less opaque and more profitable for those doing business, hoping that the risks can be left somewhere else. When risks crystallise, however, they are left on the balance sheets of nations that have to cope with cleaning up the mess. So, while I approve of modernising such regimes, little alarm bells go off in my mind when I think about attracting more such business. That kind of business is attractive if it is safe; it is not attractive if it is unsafe.

The Minister ploughed through his speech about all the technicalities of the shift away from EU-regulated systems and about how onshoring back to the UK will be done. Given how large our banking, financial services and insurance sector is, we are clearly at systemic risk if we get this wrong. We have to get the balance right between ensuring that any new regimes are transparent and safe enough to be hosted in our country. The Minister took us through some of the technical changes, but will he reassure us about the transparency and safety issues in the new regime that I have hinted at?

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