Lord Livermore (Lab)

I am grateful to my noble friend for his question, and I pay tribute to his experience in the industry that he outlined. I do not agree with his view of the industry. I am incredibly proud of the financial services sector in this country: it makes a massive contribution to our economy, and it is incredibly important that we enable it to grow and that that growth feeds through to the real economy so we can see the investment in the real economy that we want to see. My noble friend talks, perfectly correctly, about finding the right balance between risk and growth. As I say, we are not dismantling any of the architecture that was put in place in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and it is quite right that we do not do that, but we believe that the pendulum has swung too far towards regulating only for risk. It needs to regulate not just for risk but for growth, and that is the right thing to do. I think my noble friend is wrong to say that we are in any way giving financial advice. We are trying to put in place what has been called a targeted support framework that enables people to access the help they need to make the right financial decisions for them, and that will be ready to support consumers by ISA season next year. It would enable authorised firms, not the Government, to proactively suggest appropriate products or courses of action, using limited information about a customer and their circumstances. That could include helping people to make decisions about how to access their pension, supporting people with excess cash savings to consider investing for the first time. I cannot believe that anyone would think that was anything but a good idea.