Lucy Rigby

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I am not sure either of my descendants wants to serve in this Chamber yet—to the point made by the shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier)—but there we are. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley (Callum Anderson) for securing this debate and for his consistent advocacy for the importance of financial services to the United Kingdom. While I am not sure I needed any convincing, even in the short time since returning to this brief I have seen that importance at first hand: in Leeds, home to an incredibly vibrant financial services cluster; in conversations that I have had with debt advice organisations about the difference that timely support can make to those in difficulty; and in Bournemouth, where I met degree apprentices and those at the beginning of their careers who are building the sector’s future. Those few engagements have reinforced for me just how much a thriving financial services sector matters to communities right across this country. I wholly appreciate the contributions of all hon. Members to this debate, whether they wear their financial services experience on their sleeve or seek to hide it—whatever experience they have, it has been a very informed debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves), to whom I pay tribute, put financial services at the heart of this Government’s growth agenda and launched our 10-year strategy for the sector. The new Chancellor has been equally clear about its importance. Within days of taking office, he went to Bloomberg, reiterating his support for the central importance of our financial services sector. I think that that answers, at least in large part, one of the questions put to me by the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt); the remainder of his questions I shall seek to answer as well. I look forward to supporting the Chancellor as we continue to deliver on the Government’s financial services strategy. In doing so, I recognise the challenges, but also the opportunities, in the five areas that my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley has identified as central to the future of financial services. I will take each of those themes in turn. I thank him for his continued advocacy for strengthening UK capital markets and ensuring that those long-standing strengths support long-term investment in the British economy. He is right to recognise the progress that has already been made. Through the financial services strategy, the Government have taken decisive action to increase investment, to improve outcomes for savers and to support growing British businesses. We have delivered the Pension Schemes Act 2026, established a framework to monitor delivery of the Mansion House accord, enabled targeted support for consumers and launched measures to help to build a stronger retail investment culture, a point I will come back to. Mobilising more domestic capital must go hand in hand with ensuring that firms can access the right finance at the right time. Innovative businesses need clear funding pathways, from start-up right the way through to scale-up and into public markets, if they are to invest, expand, create jobs and, of course, remain headquartered in the UK. That is exactly why we are strengthening funding pathways at every stage of business growth. The expanded British Business Bank is helping to address market gaps and crowd in investment, while the National Wealth Fund is mobilising investment into the sectors and infrastructure that will drive long-term economic growth. We also recognise the particular challenge of later-stage funding. Our reforms are intended to support a more diverse range of funding sources and connect high-growth firms with the capital that they need to scale domestically and internationally. Strong capital markets are central to that objective. The UK has deep markets, global expertise and a position as Europe’s leading investment hub. There is no complacency, to answer my hon. Friend’s point, in my saying that we must ensure that our markets consistently deliver what companies need and make the UK the best place for firms to start, scale, list and stay. PISCES—the private intermittent securities and capital exchange system—provides a stepping stone from private to public markets. Hon. Members may have recently taken note of its first major auctions, which saw Wayve and Moneybox sell more than £100 million of shares between them. We have removed barriers to secondary fundraisings, improved market liquidity and eased accounting and reporting requirements for the smallest companies, because listing must be the beginning of a company’s growth story, not the end. Alongside these reforms, we are encouraging pension funds to diversify—I acknowledge the passionate case made by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean)—supporting investment in private markets and helping savers to access better information and guidance. Trustees and fund managers must, of course, remain responsible for decisions made in the best interests of their members and customers. Sustainable success will come from making UK assets an attractive investment proposition. On retail investment, I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley that too much capital remains in low-yield savings when it could be working harder for individuals and the wider economy. We are therefore helping people to understand the opportunities and risks of investing, and giving them access to appropriate guidance and support. We have also been working closely with the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee to increase the financial system’s ability to support economic growth, which relates to another of the questions put to me by the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash on financing for SMEs. Taken together, those measures join up the full investment chain: mobilising more domestic savings, directing capital towards productive assets, widening access to finance for growing businesses and ensuring that UK capital markets help business to build and grow global companies here. Secondly, I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley for pointing out the opportunities presented by the digitalisation of financial markets. That is something I am particularly passionate about. The shadow EST, the hon. Member for Wyre Forest, talked about the importance of innovation to financial services—something that I talk about almost on an hourly basis in this job. The UK is a global leader in financial services because we have consistently embraced innovation; I will not go through the coffee houses that were set up on the banks of the Thames decade by decade. I should say at this point that it is fantastic to have leaders in the insurance industry listening to this debate from the Public Gallery. Innovation is important. We must consistently innovate, because it is key to our global competitiveness and the future of our financial services industry. Our ambition is to digitalise the UK’s financial markets and make the UK a world leader in tokenised finance. It is reassuring and encouraging to hear the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash indicate that he thinks that is a sensible ambition. We are moving from experimentation to adoption at scale, as set out in our wholesale financial market digital strategy. We appointed Chris Woolard as the Government’s wholesale digital markets champion, and he published his first report in July. We are enabling firms to adopt tokenised securities through the digital securities sandbox, where the first firm recently received permission to conduct live activity. The regulators have committed to publishing a full cross-authority road map on tokenisation of wholesale markets later in 2026. We have committed to issuing DIGIT, a digital sovereign debt instrument, no later than quarter 1 2027. Alongside that, we are modernising and optimising the foundations of our markets, moving to a T+1 settlement cycle from quarter 4 2027 to reduce risk and improve efficiency. The hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) talked about the importance of stablecoins, and I think he welcomed the innovation objective that we are giving to the Bank of England. Stablecoins are important because they can enable faster and more efficient transactions, which means that money that would otherwise be held up can be spent by businesses on other things—they free up capital by being an efficient means of payment. The Government want to see Great British pound denominated systemic stablecoins and, as he is aware, we have established the regulatory regime. There really is no shortage of ambition from the Government when it comes to stablecoins—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is gesturing as if I have forgotten something; I think that means he wants me to address the matter of a central digital bank currency. Work in that regard is ongoing among the Government, the Treasury and the Bank, and we will set out the next steps very shortly. Many Members mentioned AI, which is already delivering benefits across financial services, from improved customer services to tackling fraud, enhancing productivity and supporting decision making. We now have an AI adoption plan; I will not rehearse that, but I want to pick up on the hon. Gentleman’s points, since he rightly highlighted the extreme importance of resilience in our financial system—as he pointed out, the Governor has been speaking about that recently. Work is going on across Government, including with the regulators and in international fora. I hope I can reassure him that the Government are taking the issue about as seriously as it is possible to take it. The third area that my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley mentioned was clean energy. The UK is playing a leading role in supporting and financing the global net zero transition, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) has spoken passionately about in this place on many occasions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley will be aware, the UK is already one of the world’s leading sustainable finance centres, and the Government’s focus is on how we can evolve and expand that leadership. We are delivering a number of targeted initiatives and prioritising changes that will have the greatest impact, such as UK sustainability reporting standards. We are also focused on making the UK a global hub for transition finance, which is not only essential to meeting our global net zero goals, but a major opportunity for UK growth and investment. I will speed up, but I want to mention financial inclusion as another aspect of my brief that I am particularly passionate about. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his recognition of the financial inclusion strategy; I intend to make it a step change in how easily all our constituents can access the financial services they need. He rightly recognised that the ability to open a bank account, to build a modest savings buffer, to access safe and affordable credit, to secure insurance and to protect against life’s shocks is fundamental to participation in our economy and, therefore, to participation in our society. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke passionately about the importance of ensuring that financial services are available to all who need them. For all those reasons, those areas are the focus of our financial inclusion strategy, with actions ranging from supporting those without a fixed address to open a bank account, to supporting our credit union sector through a £30 million transformation fund. You are indicating, Mr Twigg, that I should draw my speech to a close. Before I do so, let me again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley for securing the debate and all Members for their contributions.