Baroness Kramer (LD)

My Lords, I am afraid that all the amendments in this group are mine. Amendment 29 has also been signed by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, for which I am most grateful. I will be brief as the hour is late. In this Bill, the Government will transfer all supervision of professional service firms in respect of anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing from the current professional bodies to the FCA. Members of this House have received representation from a wide range of professional groups which are, frankly, utterly dismayed. They recognise that the FCA is trying to respond to their needs and issues, but it seems to have very little idea how to fund or resource the complex guidance and education required as part of that supervisory and monitoring process. It seems, as far as I can understand, that the FCA now says that it would like the professional bodies themselves to continue to provide all that work but, in essence, on an unpaid basis. That is not realistic. The FCA has produced a high-level road map, but I hear universally that it is very short of information and low on timing details. I can agree that the current system has historically suffered from fragmentation, but I am not sure that we needed a remedy on the scale of the changes that are in the Bill. The fragmentation issue was being dealt with reasonably effectively by OPBAS—the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision—that had been created to sit above the professional bodies to provide co-ordination standards and make them effective. Where OPBAS had a weakness was in its communication with enforcement agencies, but this issue could have been remedied without the radical change on the scale represented in the Bill. My amendments require an assessment of this transition process, particularly on issues such as education guidance and compliance support, timetables, regional coverage and supervisory fees. There is real concern now that with an additional layer of supervision brought into the picture, fees are going to increase very significantly. My amendment would also require the FCA to have regard to having the appropriate expertise on hand to provide that support and guidance—that is significant expertise ranging from accounting to taxation. It has not really taken on these issues historically. I will not be pressing this issue because the FCA is trying to find ways to make this system work. I honestly do not think that the FCA would have wished this upon itself; nor would the professional bodies have wished it upon themselves. It really is important that the Government understand that they need to think much more carefully when they introduce radical change when, frankly, much more modest and targeted change would have served the purpose better.