I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

Sadly, my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes cannot be with us today. I apologise for my late arrival; I had a constituent issue.

There will be questions about how the provisions in new clause 16 would be financed, but the Committee must be conscious of why we tabled it. The FCA has been immune in this sense for nearly two decades, and there have been issues over that period. Notably, I am mindful of some of the issues related to its dealings with the crash and so on. I am also mindful of the possibilities for payment back in terms of liabilities. For example, NatWest was fined £265 million by the FCA as recently as last December. There are certainly possibilities to finance such a process.

The rationale is that if we look at organisations and individuals who have suffered due to the FCA’s failure to prevent several scandals—notably in 2019 with London Capital & Finance, when 11,000 bondholders were said to have lost more than £200 million—that is not acceptable. Those bondholders were most probably not the kind of high-end multibillionaires who could maybe lose a couple of million pounds and not think anything of it. They were our constituents who make some small or medium-sized investments. They are people who might be in business, or trying to hold their companies together.

We need to challenge and discuss the failure of the FCA to deal with such issues. I am keen to hear what the Government have to say about how we can build strength into the Bill, whether that is through the regulator or through other means. I will wait to hear what the Minister says in terms of pressing the motion to a vote, because I think there might be an opportunity to bring it back at another stage when we can have further debate and deliberation.