Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)

My Lords, I take great pleasure in returning to the Front Bench to debate Treasury matters, albeit now in a shadow capacity. Although I do not have current interests to declare, I hope that my past experience as Commercial Secretary to the Treasury and as a member of the EU Financial Affairs Sub-Committee will stand me in good stead. Until 2022 I served as a non-executive director of a challenger bank and, of course, I have served in business more generally. I thank the Minister for her clear explanation of these two instruments and their obvious complexities. I am glad of the opportunity to work with her across the House and I look forward to hearing the answers to the observations made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, especially about risk. Our investment schemes and central counterparties are without question the backbone of the United Kingdom’s financial services industry. They enable our country to attract global capital, support pensions and, ultimately, benefit people and businesses up and down the country. As the Minister said, it is important that the rules and regulations are not needlessly bureaucratic. The removal of EU recognition is welcome. We now have domestic arrangements for oversight and I believe we should not be double-banking, so I am in a slightly different place to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, on that. I wish to make two wider points. I am particularly grateful to the Minister for including a de minimis impact assessment with the first SI. I note that it has also been through the better regulation unit. I have always been a huge supporter of impact assessment and wider cost-benefit analysis of all legislation, but I have two questions. Can the Minister confirm that it is the policy of the new Government to require de minimis assessments of this kind on all SIs—unless the impact is negligible, as with the insurance distribution SI? She can perhaps answer for the Treasury today. I note from GOV.UK that her ministerial role also relates to business regulation more widely. Although she may need to write, I would appreciate a wider answer, as such a requirement would help deliver value for money across government and limit the negative effect on growth of new regulation. My other concern is the glacial pace at which we are leaving the EU financial services regime behind. The collective investment SI provides for a year’s extension of a temporary regime. Although this may be well and good for the reasons the Minister has clearly explained, I have no idea when the UK will have completed the task of replacing EU financial services law with our own. I was trying to advance this process in 2017 when I was at the Treasury so that we would be ready when Brexit day arrived; as it happened, it did not arrive until January 2020. I believe the transition was well debated during the passage of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, but I have two other related questions. Do the Government, with the help of the regulators, have a plan for completing it and taking advantage of any new freedoms and simplifications that are now possible? Will the Minister agree to send me a list of the missing regulations and a timetable? Although it is a demand, I mean that as a constructive question. Our financial services sector is so important to UK growth, and we need to make sure that these changes are completed, take effect and help our financial services sector, which has so much to contribute to UK growth, productivity and prosperity. Having said that, I am very happy to support the two sets of regulations.