John Glen

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and to my ministerial experience as the Economic Secretary between January 2018 and July 2022. Listening to the opening speeches gave me pause to reflect on some of my decisions. I hope that I am the sort of politician who is ready to concede where I did not go far enough or where mistakes were made, but after I have gone through some of the measures in this Bill, I want to offer some broader observations about the interaction between the Treasury, this place and our regulators, because it goes to the heart of how we move forward effectively as a country. as the shadow Economic Secretary said, the Bill contains some very welcome measures. Although the detail will be worked through in Committee, I think we can be positive about the reforms to credit unions. I made some changes to expand the common bond, and I wish the Government well with their extension of it. I ask the Economic Secretary to examine the issue of the interaction of credit unions and Help to Save. For many of the people who use credit unions, the opportunity, on an automated basis, to sign up to Help to Save—it gives everyone on universal credit the opportunity to save up to £600 a year, and after two years receive a 50% bonus from the Government—in these times would be very welcome. I am not sure exactly how that would be achieved, and I realise it is complicated, but it just stands to reason that it should be more readily accessible. I also welcome the reform of consumer credit. These matters were discussed in my office four or five years ago, and I welcome the Government bringing it forward. I certainly did not seek to slow it down, but it is an incredibly complicated piece of work to update our consumer credit framework and how we protect consumers in a world where financial products and the interactions of consumers when taking out products have transformed considerably over the last 52 years. However, as we look at the changes—I note the comments of the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), on the Financial Ombudsman Service changes—we have got ourselves into a bit of a mess in this country. In the Treasury Committee, I found myself talking about motor finance, and reflecting on being told that harms have been done to me when, from my perspective, I had made a decision about the amount of the deposit and the monthly payment in a financial agreement. However, I fully accept that the consumer credit legislation as it is at the moment means there was an obligation of proactive disclosure on behalf of whoever provided me with that product, rather than some reasonable test of what I should reasonably ask of the person providing the product. To me, that goes to the heart of the dilemma we face in financial services: to what extent can we in this place legislate against risk or put some reasonable responsibility on an individual consumer to take ownership of the decisions they make?