Dame Meg Hillier

I agree with my hon. Friend, who is also a member of the Treasury Committee and a constituency neighbour of mine in London. We are not suggesting for a moment that the Treasury Committee starts rolling up its sleeves, conducting job interviews or getting in CVs. That is not our role. Our role is to be a check and a balance on the Government. As I said to the Opposition Front Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Wyre Forest, we are not legislating for the people here in this Chamber, who I believe are good and honourable Members with all good intent. We have to legislate for the worst possible set of legislators and the worst possible Government, and we need to make sure that we have that commitment to the independence of the Financial Ombudsman Service. This would be one small step that would take nothing away from the rest of the Bill. It would not damage any of the Government’s set-out intentions. I know that the Chancellor is a strong advocate for a strong Parliament, and he should be praised and recognised for that, so I hope he will consider this option. I am happy to share my thoughts with the Economic Secretary on how an amendment could be tabled; it may be that it can come up in Committee—I would hope that it would not have to wait until a later stage, on Report. It is essential that the Chair of the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is a key public role, has the necessary independence and professional skills to maintain the balance between consumers and the financial services industry. The Treasury Committee has a number of pre-appointment hearings—more than a number of Committees do—and our measure is professional competence and independence. I would hope—and so far, Members will be glad to know, this has proved to be the case—that when the Treasury goes through a proper recruitment process, it recruits people with professional competence. We measure against that. Again, if there were a mad, bad or dangerous Government in future, that might not always be the case, but so far it has been. The independence point is important too, and that is what is often tested in the room when we have someone before us for a pre-appointment hearing. We do not have a power to sack, but in this case, we think we should have an extra power of a lock on that appointment. The Financial Ombudsman Service is accountable to Parliament. The Treasury Committee was compelled, due to the actions of a previous chair of the Financial Ombudsman Service, to underline that point in our ninth report of the session 2024-25, which was entitled— I say this for Hansard’s purposes and I am sure that colleagues will avidly look this up in a moment—“Financial Ombudsman Service: Accountability to the House of Commons”. Providing the Treasury Committee with a statutory lock on the appointment of the FOS chair would help to guard against a repeat of that incident. I was saddened at the time to receive a letter from a public appointee to say that they did not have to appear in front of the Treasury Committee because they were a Member of the other place. That is another issue that I will take up in due course. The Second Reading debate is obviously about arguments in principle, but I am happy to have a further conversation with the Economic Secretary on the detail. I want to raise a couple of other quick points while I have the floor. On financial inclusion, I know the Economic Secretary has played her part—I think four Economic Secretaries have dealt with the financial inclusion strategy. Now that it has been published, the Committee will keep an eye on how it is going. We published a report on the matter, and the Government told the Committee that the Bill would include a reserve power on access to face-to-face banking services, recognising the limitations of voluntary action. The power was removed in the other place following concerns about its breadth. In their response to our report, the Government said they intended to restore that power during the passage of the Bill in the Commons, and that they would use evidence from the access to banking services review to do so. I would be interested, if the Economic Secretary could cover that in her closing remarks.