Contribution
My Lords, as this is the first time I am speaking on Report, I should remind the House of my interests as a shareholder in Fidelity National Information Services Inc, which provides services to the financial sector, and as a non-practising member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Pitt-Watson, to his new role, and I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood, because, when we discussed this clause in Committee, I jokingly referred to the Minister not always being the Minister, for which I apologise.
I have Amendment 9 in this group, which would remove the egregious Henry VIII power from Clause 3. I have also added my name to Amendment 10, which would delete Clause 3 altogether. As I explained in Committee, as someone who lives in a very rural area, my nearest bank branch, now that the last branch in my nearest town has closed, is a 100-mile round trip—so access to banking is a subject with which I have a lot of personal sympathy. I look forward to seeing the Lloyd report once it has been published in October. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, I expect to support an awful lot that will be in it.
The problem with Clause 3 is that it gives the Government incredibly broad and unfettered powers in this respect, including an unlimited power to amend any Act of Parliament. Indeed, there is nothing in the clause that would prevent a Government reducing access to banking if they chose to do so. I do not think I can put it any better than our Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its report of 17 June, which brought these wide powers to the House’s attention. It concluded that
“the problem with clause 3 is that it confers a wide regulation-making power on Ministers before any key policy decisions have been made, before any problem has been clearly identified and assisted by a power to amend any Act of Parliament ever made. Such a power severely compromises effective parliamentary scrutiny. We consider that the power in clause 3 is inappropriately wide and should be removed from the Bill”.
This Government have form on pushing through legislation before they know what they want to do with it, and this example is particularly egregious. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood, in Committee when he was the Minister, which Acts of Parliament the Government had in mind to alter using this power. The response, I am sorry to say, was less than illuminating. He said that
“the Treasury expects to use the power if needed to amend relevant legislation, for example, financial services legislation”.—[Official Report, 22/6/26; col. GC 232.]
He went on to say:
“As the recommendations of the independent Access to Banking Services review are currently unknown, it is necessary for Clause 3 to be able to amend primary legislation to respond to any recommendations that are made”.—[Official Report, 22/6/26; col. GC 235.]
In other words, “We don’t know what we want to do, so we’re just going to make it as wide as possible”. My guess is that it is actually highly unlikely that any primary legislation will need to be changed as a result of this, but we shall see.
I think that makes the case against Clause 3. It is not satisfactory for the Government to give themselves the widest of powers, including the unlimited power to change any existing Act of Parliament, when they have no idea what they want to do with those powers.
The Government claim, in the Explanatory Memorandum and elsewhere, that they will narrow the powers once the Lloyd report has been received. But this is Report. We have not seen the report. It will take I do not know how many months for the Government to come up with recommendations based on the report. The Bill will probably already be law by then, so there will be no real opportunity to narrow the powers.
I am sure that the House will support moves to improve access to banking when in due course the Government actually have a plan, and, in the unlikely event that changes are required to existing law, a short, focused Bill can be created to do that, which, as all changes to the law should be, can be subject to the proper scrutiny processes of Parliament. This unfocused clause is too wide and any resulting changes to law would not be subject to proper scrutiny. That is not the right way to legislate. At the very least, the Henry VIII clause should be removed, as I suggest in Amendment 9, but the clause as a whole is too wide, and therefore I urge all noble Lords to support Amendment 10 from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, to remove this unrestricted power.