Speeches by Dean.

“But the bank still holds that money—”

“If they move it from cash into, say, a stocks and shares ISA, they might believe that is a relatively sound investment, but it is still riskier.”

“A lot of the focus seems to be on potentially weakening protections for consumers. To go back to your previous example about money sitting in a bank account, could we not regulate better to get the banks to allocate that capital properly, rather than trying to encourage consumers to take riskier investments?”

“We have taken quite a bit of evidence and had a few discussions recently about what is happening in the motor finance industry. The absence or ambiguity of regulation has been put forward by firms as a reason why problems have happened, and consumers say that they feel like they have been ripped off because of collusio…”

“When we speak to regulators, they speak most often to the firms that they are regulating so some of their ideas for deregulation may be coming from those firms as well. Can you give us some concrete examples of where deregulation in the recent past has resulted in tangible and sustained economic growth?”

“I am going to keep rattling through. I was struck, Baroness Manzoor, when you spoke earlier about claims management companies. You seem to have a fairly negative view of them. You said that that they sometimes look for windows of opportunity that they are looking to exploit. What proportion of claims management company…”

“The central concern would be that when people go to an ombudsman, they expect a decision to be heard by an ombudsman, but they are not always going to be, and you might be reducing the number of people who get to access that. We also have the two-stage complaints process. You say in your documentation that it was aboli…”

“When you say “people’s”, are these firms’ concerns?”

“You did but the overall—”

“What is the proportion of bad versus good ones?”

“You are saying “many”, so you are saying that the proportion that are bad are in the majority.”

“What I am trying to get at is whether it is “some” or “many”, and the proportion.”

“I want to understand the problem that you are trying to outline.”

“Can I ask a follow-up question before that? I will get to the point sooner if I can. If it is some, it would seem to me more sensible that the remedy is to be reporting these bad operators to the SRA and to get them dealt with accordingly.”

“If it is a majority, maybe we do need to look at wider reform. What is your engagement with the SRA when you report the bad firms? Or are there just too many of them?”

“The proposal is a £250 fee, which I guess you are assuming will eliminate this behaviour. It could also impact on the claims management company industry. The question about proportion is crucial, because if you end up damaging the CMC industry overall, and therefore damaging consumers’ ways of holding financial firms t…”

“I have one final specific reform point, if I can. Some consumers will see CMCs as a lifeline, because they are time-poor and do not have the legal expertise to match up against the might of the financial industry that they are coming up against. It is important to say that. As an example of that, you are also looking t…”

“The bar for a law enforcement agency is going to be extremely high, though. Would it not support an investigation if FOS was to make a verdict on those cases too?”

“There is a proposal about allowing people to go to an ombudsman only if they present new evidence or there is a factual inaccuracy. I am trying to work out how many cases would fall by the wayside if that was to be the rule. What percentage of cases would you estimate would not be able to pass that threshold?”

“Do you have an estimate for how many of these would not be able to be heard under the new rules?”