Pre-legislative Scrutiny Research Articles

The Reorganisation of Financial Services Supervision in the UK: An Interim Progress Report

The UK has embarked upon a programme of reform that will result in the Financial Services Authority (FSA) being split into two separate authorities, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A new BoE committee, the Financial Policy Committee (FPC), will perform macroprudential systemic oversight functions. The BoE will assume responsibility for the oversight of clearing and settlement systems in addition to its existing responsibility for payment systems. Crisis management and bank resolution functions will also sit with the BoE.The new arrangements are expected to be fully up and running by the end of 2012. A considerable amount of practical preparatory work is already underway, including the establishment of an interim FPC and an internal re-organisation within the FSA to split it into separate prudential and conduct units.Primary legislation is required to establish the legal framework for the new institutional structure. At the time of writing (October 2011), a Joint Committee of the House of Lords and House of Commons is conducting pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill, and HM Treasury has also recently completed its own public consultation on the draft Bill.This paper, drawn from work done for the purposes of giving evidence before the Joint Committee, focuses on certain key features of the draft Bill that are emerging from the scrutiny process. It provides an overview of salient features of the current debate.

Defamation - the promise of reform

Brief article by Julian Harris (Deputy General Editor, Amicus Curiae) on the impact of Lord Lester's private members's Defamation Bill in the House of Lords on May 26th, 2010 aiming to "reform English defamation law so that it strikes a fair balance between the fundamental right to freedom of expression and public information and the protection of good reputation" and moves by the Ministry of Justice to publish a draft Defamation Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny.

Making a Difference? The Effectiveness of Pre-Legislative Scrutiny

Making a Difference? The Effectiveness of Pre-Legislative Scrutiny

Time to Get Real

Last year saw the passing of the Communications Act, a measure which is likely to change the face of broadcasting in Britain quite as drastically, perhaps even more so, than the Broadcasting Act 1990. The enactment of this particular piece of legislation was the culmination of a lengthy process which kicked off in 1998 with the publication of the Green Paper Regulating Communications, which was followed in 2000 by the White Paper A New Future for Communications. The Draft Communications Bill was published in 2002; this was then subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of the two Houses, chaired by David Puttnam, which published its report later in the year. As a result, the Bill was partially re-drafted; it was then presented to Parliament, which passed it in 2003. As someone who was involved, at that time as a media journalist, in the battles around the Broadcasting Bill in the late 1980s, I had an overwhelming sense of deja vu (or, rather, deja lu), when Regulating Communications appeared in 1998. Now, though, I was back in academia, but still equally concerned with matters of media policy and regulation, and keen to involve myself in the processes of consultation and lobbying which I knew lay ahead. However, over the next five years, it was not primarily as an academic that I found myself involved but, rather, as the Chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and thus, in turn, as part of a loose alliance of NGOs and trade unions opposed to the Bill’s neo-liberal thrust. Fellow media academics were conspicuously thin on the ground, and of the tiny handful who poured enormous effort into trying to influence the Bill’s contents, the majority, in my view, did their most effective work under the auspices of bodies such as the Voice of the Listener and Viewer, the Campaign for Quality Television and the Third World and Environment Broadcasting Project. And now it’s consultation time yet again, with the run-up to BBC charter renewal and Ofcom consulting in all directions. Once more the

CAPITAL MARKETS REGULATION IN NIGERIA AND THE UK: THE ROLE OF THE COURTS

Both Nigeria and the UK have recently overhauled their securities regulation regimes, Nigeria by its Investment and Securities Act 1999 (ISA 1999) and the UK by its Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA 2000). The FSMA 2000 has resulted in a single, cross-sectoral regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA). It regulates the whole of the UK financial services sector: investment business, banking and insurance. This Act is the culmination of an evolutionary process which began with self-imposed so-called (in particular, of the London Stock Exchange in the 19th century) and led to self-regulation within a statutory framework under the Financial Services Act 1986. The main umbrella regulator under the 1986 Act was the Securities and Investments Board, the SIB, a registered company limited by guarantee, to which statutory powers were (revocably) delegated by the Government. But the day-to-day regulation of investment businesses was in fact undertaken by a number of self-regulatory organizations (SROs), which were recognized and overseen by the SIB. This complex institutional structure proved unsatisfactory and the FSMA 2000 now directly vests all regulatory powers in a single regulator, the FSA. In status the FSA is the SIB re-named but it now has extensive, directly conferred, statutory regulatory powers over the whole financial services sector. The FSMA 2000 took three years finally to reach the statute book and another 18 months to be brought into force. This lengthy period was characterized by extensive consultation, including pre-legislative scrutiny by a specialist committee of both Houses of Parliament.' Consultation remains an important hallmark of the new system, as will be shown below.

The Future for Financial Regulation: The Financial Services and Markets Bill

A draft Financial Services and Markets Bill (FSMB) proposing a significant reorganisation of regulatory responsibility in the financial sector in the United Kingdom was published by the government in July 1998. Following consultation' undertaken by the Treasury and pre-legislative scrutiny undertaken by a joint committee2 of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the Bill was introduced into the House of Commons on 17 June 1999.3 It provides for the transfer of almost all regulatory functions in the financial sector to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and it also proposes some changes in the powers available to the regulator. The Bill is unlikely to become law until early in the year 20004 but substantial progress has already been made in preparing the regulatory response to its introduction: the FSA has issued 20 detailed consultation papers and the Treasury is consulting on several draft Orders to be made under powers provided by FSMB. When the Bill is passed it is likely that the new regulatory structure will already be in place in terms of regulatory personnel, rulebooks and enforcement procedures. This note examines the major changes introduced by FSMB with the objective of assessing whether they can remedy the shortcomings which have became apparent within the regime established by the Financial Services Act 1986 (FSA 1986).