Lord Eatwell: My Lords, the measures in this Bill that refer to Gibraltar essentially create a single financial market, and an essential component of a single financial market should be a single registry standard. So I want to ask the Government about their approach to this. When they decided to promote the measures in the Bill in support of Gibraltar, did Her Majesty’s Treasury conduct a review of the...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, we should all be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for her persistence in this vital area. She is quite right that the clock is ticking: with nine months to go, we really need to do something about this issue; to do otherwise would be irresponsible. Amendment 4 is valuable in defining continuity of contract, but there remains a problem that it does not and cannot solve:...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, I was tempted to start my speech with the famous quotation from Juvenal, “Who guards the guardians?”. But, given the strictures by the Leader of another place against speaking in foreign languages—although he was referring to Welsh—I will instead begin with a different quotation, from the late Lord Keynes. In the introduction to The General Theory of Employment, Interest and...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, during our debates on this Bill, we have referred several times to the success of principles-based regulation in this country. We have contrasted it with the more prescriptive regulatory structures introduced within the European Union. The idea of a duty of care is a prime example of principles-based regulation because it presents a principle from which particular actions can be...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, I declare an interest as another former chair of the British Library. As has been acknowledged already, there is no rational reason why the BL should be excluded from a source of finance that is available to other great public institutions. However, the government scheme itself is questionable. The very essence of a project that is funded by borrowing is that it should earn a...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, in these very uncertain times, it is inevitable that some of the Budget measures will prove an unexpected success and some an unexpected failure. So, instead of dealing with detail, I will focus on the inspiration and what the Budget tells us about the Chancellor’s thinking—his economic philosophy, if you like. Fortunately, that philosophy is summed up in the Budget speech:...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, did the Government make any assessment of the impact the free trade agreement would have on musicians touring the European Union? If they bothered to make such an assessment, will they publish the details right away?
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. There were so many interesting, albeit short, interventions. I have one major comment, but first, I express concern at the Minister’s use, three times, of the phrase “sustainable public finances”. That sounds very comfortable, but it is the weasel word for austerity. Whenever anyone hears that phrase, the...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, to repair the UK economy, we must learn the lessons of the past dreadful months. The new normal cannot be the same as the old normal. We are today enduring the second major economic crisis in 12 years. The global financial crisis of 2008-9 saw UK income fall by 5% in one year, and the government deficit rise by £110 billion. In due course unemployment rose to 8%. This year the Bank...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, following on from the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, can the Minister tell us when there is going to be a verified register of beneficial ownership in the United Kingdom?
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, as the chairman of a regulatory organisation, I find the discussion about the word “adjustment” very disturbing. I shall give the Minister an example. If a door is open and then you close it, you adjust the door, but it is still in essence the same piece of wood moving within a frame. Taking that over to financial regulation, if a particular regulatory structure permits a given...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Prior, particularly as I had set out to be critical of the White Paper. Having listened to him, I realise I must temper some of my criticisms. Although the policy set out in the White Paper is a step in the right direction, the measures proposed are a pale imitation of the sort of programme of institutional reform that could...
Lord Eatwell: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they treat children who claim to be adopted differently from those who are not adopted in determining immigration cases; and if so, how many instances of such different treatment there have been in the last five years.
Lord Eatwell: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 26 October (HL2021), which member states of the UN have adoption laws that are not recognised as lawful in the UK.
Lord Eatwell: To ask Her Majesty's Government what proof of adoption is required for a child adopted in a foreign jurisdiction to be deemed lawfully adopted by the UK authorities.
Lord Eatwell: To ask Her Majesty's Government in which circumstances the Home Office differentiates between adopted and natural children for (1) immigration purposes, and (2) other purposes.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, there has been a lot of debate about the likely impact that leaving the European Union will have on the UK economy. To date, there have been two indisputable negative impacts. First, the fall in the pound as a consequence of the referendum vote has the direct effect of reducing real incomes. The second negative impact, indisputably, is the content of the gracious Speech. For the...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, first, I declare an interest as chairman of the Jersey Financial Services Commission and therefore the person responsible for the beneficial ownership register in Jersey. The question addressed in Amendment 14, of public access to registers of beneficial ownership, is not one for me, and I will not address the value or otherwise of making a register public—that is a political...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, I regret that I did not have the opportunity to participate in the Second Reading debate on this Bill as I was abroad. I have, however, read with care the record in Hansard, in particular those speeches by noble Lords who referred to the matters under consideration in this group of amendments. I wish to speak to Amendment 169 and do so because I have a particular interest to...
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, I am impressed by the extensive lack of support for this amendment throughout the House. I say in response to what the Minister has said that, of course, the powers have developed and lessons have been learnt since the financial crisis, but I was referring to the recentralisation of powers rather than some of the extra powers that have resulted from the lessons learnt. The main...