PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Future of Financial Services - 9 November 2020 (Commons/Commons Chamber)
Debate Detail
Financial services have been fundamental to Britain’s economic strength for centuries and they remain fundamental today. The vigour and creativity of this industry adds over £130 billion of value to the UK economy, employs over 1 million people, and has been a critical source of revenues to support the NHS through coronavirus, contributing nearly £76 billion in tax receipts last year. Let us put paid, once and for all, to the myth that financial services and the City of London are synonyms; two thirds of the people employed in financial and professional services work outside London, in places such as Edinburgh, Leeds, Durham, Cardiff and Belfast. About half of all financial services exports come from outside London too, with the north and midlands alone exporting as much as the entire financial services industry of France.
This is the start of a new chapter for financial services. The industry is better regulated, better capitalised and more resilient than it was in 2008. Coronavirus has reminded us that financial services are essential services, and the whole House will share my gratitude to the people keeping their local bank branches open, supporting vulnerable customers and working at extraordinary pace to deliver over £60 billion of new loan schemes, reminding us that this industry is at its best when it puts the interests of consumers first. As we leave the EU, we have an opportunity to set out a new vision for this sector—a vision based not on a race to the bottom, but on a financial services industry that is open, innovative and leads the world in the use of green finance.
I am taking three steps towards that vision today. Our first task as we write this new chapter for financial services is to give certainty on our approach to regulation after we leave the transition period. One of the central mechanisms for managing our cross-border financial services activity with the EU and beyond is equivalence. I remain firmly of the view that it is in both the UK’s and the EU’s interests to reach a comprehensive set of mutual decisions on equivalence. Throughout, our ambition has been to manage these co-operatively with the EU, but it is now clear that there are many areas where the EU is simply not prepared to even assess the UK, so we need now now decide on how best to proceed. Of course, we will always want a constructive and engaged relationship with the European Union, but after four years I think it is time for us to move forward as a country and do what is right for the UK. To provide certainty and stability to industry and deliver our goal of open, well-regulated markets, I am publishing today a set of equivalence decisions for the EU and European economic area member states. Of course, we are ready to continue the conversation where we have not yet been able to take decisions, but in the absence of clarity from the EU we are acting unilaterally to provide certainty to firms, both here and in Europe.
I am also publishing today a detailed framework for our approach to equivalence more generally. Our approach here will be simple: we will use equivalence when it is in the UK’s economic interest to do so, taking a technical, outcomes-based approach that prioritises stability, openness and transparency. And of course we now have the freedom to build new, deeper financial services relationships with countries outside the EU. We are making good on that promise already, progressing our partnership with Switzerland, the second biggest financial hub in Europe after the UK; India, holding a significant economic and financial dialogue just two weeks ago; and Japan, agreeing a new partnership that goes further than the EU’s own financial services arrangements.
Equivalence is not our only tool to ensure openness as a jurisdiction. Control of our own regulatory regime means that we need to be clear with our trading partners about how our overseas firms can access the UK’s markets in a way that is predictable, safe and transparent, so I am announcing today that we will launch a call for evidence on our overseas regime before setting out our future approach next year. To boost the number of new companies that want to list here in the UK, I am setting up a taskforce to make recommendations early next year on our future listings regime. To build on the 113,000 jobs already supported by investment management, we will shortly publish a consultation on reforming the UK’s regime for investment funds. To encourage UK pension funds to direct more of their half a trillion pounds of capital towards our economic recovery, I am committing today to the UK’s first long-term asset fund being up and running within a year. To ensure that UK financial services exports to the EU remain competitive, we will treat those exports the same as we do for other countries. That means that UK firms will be able to reclaim input VAT on financial services exports to the EU—support for British industry and jobs worth £800 million.
We are known in this country not just for our openness, but for our ingenuity and inventiveness, too. The second part of our new financial chapter for financial services will use technology to deliver better outcomes for consumers and businesses. We are building on our existing strengths as a leading global destination to start, grow and invest in FinTech, and I look forward to welcoming Ron Kalifa’s report in this important area. We are staying at the cutting edge of payments technologies where we have just concluded the first stage of our payment landscape review and will shortly publish new plans to support the sector. We will make sure that our regulatory environment is ready to manage the far-reaching implications of technology on money itself. We will publish a consultation shortly to make new forms of privately issued currencies, known as stable coins, meet the same high standards we expect of other payment methods. The Bank of England and the Treasury are considering further whether central banks can issue their own digital currencies as a complement to cash.
Finally, this new chapter means putting the full weight of private sector innovation, expertise and capital behind the critical global effort to tackle climate change and protect the environment. We are announcing the UK’s intention to mandate climate disclosures by large companies and financial institutions across our economy by 2025, going further than recommended by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and we will be the first G20 country to do so. We are implementing a new green taxonomy, robustly classifying what we mean by “green” to help firms and investors better understand the impact of their investments on the environment. To meet growing investor demand, the UK will, subject to market conditions, issue our first ever sovereign green bond next year. This will be the first in a series of new issuances, as we look to build out a green curve over the coming years, helping to fund projects to tackle climate change, finance much-needed infrastructure investment and create green jobs across the country.
We have set out today our vision for this new chapter in the UK’s financial services industry, a vision of a global open industry where British finance and expertise is prized and sought after in Europe and beyond, a technologically advanced industry, using all its ingenuity to deliver better outcomes for consumers and businesses, a greener industry, using innovation and finance to tackle climate change and protect our environment and, above all, an industry that serves the people of this country, acting in the interests of communities and citizens, creating jobs, supporting businesses and powering growth as we direct all our strength towards economic recovery. I commend this statement to the House.
The UK produces 1% of global emissions, but companies and financial institutions based here produce 15% of those emissions. Action from the Government to match the green ambitions of many in financial services cannot come too soon. Recent developments have unfortunately gone in the wrong direction. Over the last decade, the UK has pumped £6 billion into overseas fossil fuel projects via UK Export Finance, so will the Chancellor do as Labour has demanded and immediately ban the financing of fossil fuel projects through UK Export Finance?
Labour supports the move to greater disclosure of climate-related information. Two months ago, we called on the Government to show leadership and introduce mandatory reporting ahead of COP26. The Chancellor’s announcement and that of the Financial Conduct Authority this morning are positive, but they only relate to a “comply or explain” basis, with full implementation not set for many years—until 2025. The climate crisis demands bolder action. Will the Chancellor move to mandatory reporting in the 2021-22 reporting year?
Again, the introduction of green gilts is welcome, but they are mechanisms, not ends in themselves; they obviously depend on where the money raised is then invested. So far this year, the UK Government have announced around £5 billion in green investment. That compares with £36 billion in Germany and £27 billion in France. Where is this Government’s ambition for a green recovery from the coronavirus crisis, and where is the replacement for the green investment bank that the Conservatives sold off?
As the Chancellor rightly said, the financial sector is of course critical in ensuring that start-ups and scale-ups can access the capital that they need to grow and succeed, and that is so important right now. But that must go hand in hand with oversight and protection. The drive to encourage more tech companies to list on our stock exchange cannot come at the expense of corporate responsibility, so what will he do to ensure the long-term health of British companies and the protection of British investors? And where is the action here to protect people’s access to local bank branches and to cash on their high streets? There is more in this statement about stablecoins—hardly the talk of living rooms up and down the land—than there is about people’s access to cash.
While we debate these often welcome measures, we must not forget the elephant in the room: this Government’s mishandling—I am calling it that because that is what it is—of ensuring market access for our firms to our largest trading partner. One in every 14 UK workers is employed in financial and related professional services, yet the City of London Corporation has recently said that the approach to negotiations makes them feel like the
“neglected child of an acrimonious divorce”.
With weeks to go until we leave the transition period, we still do not know whether the EU will determine that our rules are equivalent to its own. The Chancellor’s predecessor said that
“achieving equivalence on day one should not be complicated.”
The deadline for achieving equivalence was June this year. By that date, the UK had filled in just four of the 28 forms that it needed to complete. This Government cannot even complete the paperwork on time to secure market access to our largest export industry. The Chancellor said that today he was setting out our approach to equivalence. That should have been done months ago; it is such a critical aspect of the UK’s economy.
We have already seen damage being done. EY research suggests that over 7,000 jobs have already gone and that £1.2 trillion in assets are set to be relocated from the UK, with potentially worse to come as firms making plans decide not to locate those plans and jobs within our borders. It is too late now to strike a deal that would preserve market access securely; too late now—a phrase, sadly, that we are coming to associate with this Chancellor. Let me ask him, when did one of our most important sectors fall so far down his list of priorities?
The hon. Lady asked about the TCFD disclosures and comply or explain. Comply or explain is the approach that others have taken. We will be the first major economy—the first in the G20—to mandate disclosures by 2025. A road map has been published today. It is the most ambitious timetable that any major economy has produced to date. In fact, it goes far beyond what was recommended by the taskforce. I think that is something that Government Members at least will be very proud of.
The hon. Lady asked about access to cash. She should know that, in the middle of October, on about the 15th, we published our access-to-cash call for evidence, which I announced in the Budget in March. The responses to that will inform our future legislative strategy. We laid out clearly that we believe it is important that everyone has access to cash. Depending on the responses to that consultation, we will decide on the appropriate next steps.
The hon. Lady commented on our response to the equivalence process from our EU partners. I think she was trying to accuse us of being slow in replying, or not quite replying sufficiently. That will be news to the team that has spent months producing 2,500 pages of responses to the Commission responses. I might add, as she seems more willing to defend the EU in its conduct of this process, that we have not had a single question back from the European Union after sending 2,500 pages of responses over to it. I might also add that we did not feel it necessary to send it thousands and thousands of pages—we adopted a constructive approach that required very few answers, given that we know its current regulatory arrangements because we all share the same ones.
We have chosen to take an approach that prioritises financial services. Rather than wait, we have acted unilaterally to provide certainty to our financial services firms and to enshrine our reputation as a place where global firms can come and do business, because this will always be the most open, the most competitive and the most innovative place to do financial services anywhere in the world.
Financial services are of huge importance to Scotland. I note that the Chancellor did not mention Glasgow, where we have the huge Barclays complex coming out of the ground as a sign of confidence in the Scottish economy. It is not uncommon that financial services companies have been planning on moving their assets from London to elsewhere in the UK, and the Chancellor really needs to get behind that. Things have been moved out of the City of London to right across these islands because these are important, good-quality jobs.
This year, coronavirus has overtaken Brexit for financial services in terms of focus and capacity. As a consequence, there has been significantly reduced bandwidth for people working in financial services companies to prepare for the disastrous consequences of Brexit. So can the Chancellor tell us how he will support companies with their preparations, particularly as we do not know what we are preparing for—details of the relationship with Europe are so scarce because we still do not know what that relationship is going to look like? Given that instability and uncertainty are anathema to the financial sector, can the Government provide any clarity on what people ought to be preparing for in only a few weeks’ time?
We welcome the introduction of green gilts. The Treasury Committee has been looking at them, and 16 other countries have done this, including Germany and Sweden. Can the Chancellor tell us how this will impact on Scotland? What discussions has he had with the Scottish Government on this? How will he ensure that Scotland gets its fair share of any investment to come? Will the UK Government take this opportunity of new financial powers to back the transition to a low-carbon future, to accelerate their net zero targets and to match the Scottish Government’s ambitious commitments?
Equivalence is a point in time, and as the UK diverges, there is a huge risk to our access to European markets. As the Association of British Insurers has pointed out, equivalence has been used in the past as a political weapon, so how does the Chancellor plan to mitigate that?
Lastly, the Government must put their own house in order on green issues. The Treasury has a good opportunity to work across different Departments, such as UK Export Finance, to ensure that they are all making their contribution to a greener future. The Chancellor must take this seriously right across the Departments if he is going to come to COP26 in Glasgow next year with anything worth the candle.
With regard to providing certainty for firms and the support given to them, the hon. Lady will be aware that we put in place a temporary permissions regime some time ago, which provided that certainty to overseas firms needing to continue operating here after the transition period. They have known about that for a while, and it has been warmly welcomed. With regard to specific financial support, I point her to the announcements on input VAT, which will ensure that UK exports of financial services to the EU are not at a competitive disadvantage. Those firms will be able to reclaim input VAT, which will be worth several hundred million pounds in benefit to them, wherever they are in the UK.
The hon. Lady mentioned the ABI. I think that the ABI will warmly welcome the review that we have put in place on Solvency II. The feature of our insurance industry is the prevalence of long-term annuities. The capital treatment of those is not well managed by European rules, and there is an opportunity for us to improve things in that area, which is why the ABI has, I think, warmly welcomed our review of the Solvency II insurance regulations.
Lastly, the hon. Lady talked about the fact that others might wish to use equivalence as a political weapon. As I have set out, that will not be our approach. We will approach equivalence in a technical and outcomes-based way and seek always to provide transparency and stability, because in doing that, we will cement our reputation as the best place to do financial services in the world.
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