This House of Lords Library Briefing has been prepared in advance of the debate in the House of Lords on 3 September 2019 on the implementation of the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and the opportunities for further banking reform.
Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (207 KB , PDF)
The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards was a joint committee appointed by Parliament in July 2012. It was chaired by Lord Tyrie, then Conservative MP for Chichester and chair of the House of Commons Treasury Committee. The commission was established in the context of the 2008 financial crisis, and specifically following the 2012 London Inter-bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) scandal. The commission was established with the remit to:
The commission published four reports between December 2012 and April 2013, on the following subjects: banking standards; banking reform; proprietary trading; and the failure of Halifax/Royal Bank of Scotland (HBOS). The commission’s fifth and final report, Changing Banking for Good, published in June 2013, made over 100 recommendations. The report stated that its principal recommendations focused on five themes:
The Coalition Government published its response to the report in July 2013. It stated that the Coalition Government had made progress in reforming the banking sector, through the passing of the Financial Services Act 2012 and the introduction of the Banking Reform Bill (now the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013). The response also said that the Coalition Government strongly endorsed the principal findings of the report and intended to implement its main recommendations.
In November 2014, former members of the commission released a statement summarising the progress that had been made in implementing its recommendations. The former members acknowledged that while some of the report’s recommendations had been implemented, many others remained “unaddressed”. The commissioners stated that it was “essential that the momentum behind our reforms is maintained”.
In June 2018, in answer to a parliamentary question on banking standards, Theresa May’s Conservative Government stated that it had implemented the “major recommendations” of the commission’s report, both through the legislation cited above and by widening the remit of the Prudential Regulation Authority. The Government said that it continued to monitor the impact of those reforms.
Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (207 KB , PDF)
This briefing is the fifth of a series on the post-war history of the UK economy. The series proceeds decade-by-decade from the 1950s onwards, providing an overview of the key macroeconomic developments of each decade. This fifth briefing looks at the 1990s. In this decade the UK economy settled into a period of low inflation and steady growth; however, living standards growth was lower and more regionally concentrated than in previous decades.
The Budget Responsibility Bill would require ministers to request an assessment from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for every major fiscal announcement and give the OBR the power to decide to publish one if the minister failed to request it. This follows the September 2022 ‘mini-budget’. The statement included plans that would have resulted in a projected £45bn reduction in tax income. It did not have an accompanying OBR assessment.
In November 2023, the Harrington review of foreign direct investment made recommendations about how the UK could attract more cross-border investment. The new Labour government has said tackling barriers to investment is a priority.
