Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s statement that he was committed to bringing forward amendments at Third Reading. I think it is relevant to this group of amendments. I simply want to draw the House’s attention to two sessions we have had in the last three or four days with the FCA. The Minister very kindly organised a session with the FCA about its role in climate and environment. To be honest, the kindest thing I can say is that I was underwhelmed. I think that it is doing a lot more than it displayed that day. The defensiveness that it demonstrated in front of a bunch of really friendly, helpful and not at all terrifying Baronesses, was a bit of worry to me, to be honest, because I felt there was real defensiveness and push-back against a responsibility. I thought perhaps we had just given it a hard time and it was having a bad day—but we had another session with it yesterday, organised by Peers for the Planet, and I was horrified. I have the quote here because I wrote it down and then went home and wept. A fairly senior representative of the FCA said, in terms: “The FCA does not have a mandate to tell businesses what they should do on climate and the environment”. I would like the House to know that and the Minister to bear that in mind when he comes forward with his Third Reading amendments, because there is a real need for a stronger line in guidance than we might otherwise imagine.