Speeches by Dean.

“I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement and for the action he has outlined that the Government are already undertaking. He will know that customers often choose National Savings & Investments because it is Government-backed, and because that provides them with extra reassurance that their savings wi…”

“Mr Speaker, I echo your tribute to the late David Winnick. I join Members from all parts of the House in condemning the attack in north London—this House stands united against antisemitism. I am grateful for the Government’s swift commitment to replace the ambulances, which was an important gesture. I welcome the confi…”

“I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and the action he is taking on cryptocurrency, but can I urge him to go further on corporate donations? A report this week by CenTax revealed that as many as one in four donations from corporate entities are essentially opaque. It put this down to the reliance on persons…”

“You just said that it was not something you pushed for. Where did the drive come from, then? I understand that the argument goes that this was effectively a loophole for people in this space. The fact that they could play different regulators off each other when they were not communicating properly was an inefficiency …”

“That is kind of my point. I do not doubt the FCA’s focus and determination on this. I accept that it is leading international efforts in this area. It is the big tech companies we want to be more proactive and to respond, but they have not been doing that, despite your requests, for some time. You have to keep pointing…”

“Could you elaborate what some of those concerns are?”

“Just building on that, I wanted to put today’s session in the context of the wider discussion around regulators more broadly. The Chancellor stood up at Mansion House last year and said that regulators have been a boot on the neck of business and have been encouraging this higher risk appetite, but we have been discuss…”

“Mr Smart, you have spoken about the FCA taking on its role as a criminal prosecutor, I suppose, in pursuing these crimes more than perhaps any other financial regulator in the world. Do you think that the rest of Government are doing enough to support you in that?”

“I appreciate that there is currently a division. In terms of scale of the different types of crime, is investment fraud a bigger problem than APP, or are they about the same? Do they have different weightings? Do you know?”

“We started to get into financial crime in a previous session. To begin with, can we focus on investment fraud? Mr Rathi, could you give us an oversight of investment fraud versus authorised push payments fraud and other types of financial crime? What is the weighting between the caseload that you deal with?”

“Perfect. You just indicated that the consultation has been heavily engaged with, which I guess is a good thing. You said that there have been over 1,000 responses. Could you give us a sense of the weight of those responses from consumer groups versus law firms versus lenders and so on?”

“These are very often originating on online platforms. We spoke about that in the previous session. There were reports that there was a lot of widespread disappointment about the fraud strategy for not introducing financial incentives on big tech firms to co-operate on this. Was that something that you were expecting to…”

“Could I ask the question in a slightly different way, then? What was in the fraud strategy that was recently published that gives you confidence that the attitude of big tech companies is going to change?”

“On anti-money laundering, the FCA is taking on new supervision responsibilities, increasing the number of firms that it is going to supervise by tens of thousands. There has been some kickback by other trade bodies about this. Is this just self-interest because they can no longer take the fees from doing the supervisio…”

“Finally, we have spoken a bit in the past about some of the bad actors in this. There are claims management companies that you have been taking action against, I believe. There are also firms now popping up and aping the language of the FCA, saying that you do not necessarily need legal representation: “Pay us a fee an…”

“I would like to ask for a quick update on motor finance. At the beginning of the month the FCA released a statement to say that it will publish the final rules in late March and that the timing of the publication will be outside market hours and it will confirm the date in advance. It is 24 March. I wondered whether yo…”

“Great. It also said in the statement, “If we proceed with a scheme”. Are you able to confirm today whether a scheme will be proceeded with, and if not, how consumers can expect to be compensated?”

“I am sure that you, Mr Speaker, will be as concerned as I am about the recent outbreak of meningitis in Kent, and I am sure the thoughts of the whole House are with the families who have lost loved ones already. The UK Health Security Agency has a huge job on its hands to get good public health information out there an…”

“Mr Dipple-Johnstone, I wonder whether I could speak to you about whether or not you think you have enough capacity at that senior ombudsman level. When people go to an ombudsman, they want an ombudsman to make a determination. We know that is not always the case. Do you think you have sufficient capacity at that end?”

“Can we move on to the case volumes that are coming through? Perhaps these questions are for you, Ms Simmonds. I was looking at the figures. For 2025-26 you were hoping to resolve 270,000 and now the forecast is that it will be about 235,000, which is not far off the figure that you did achieve in 2024-25, an incrementa…”