Speeches by Glen.

“Can I probe a bit more on that? The truth is that, 10 years ago when this was set up, it was a new, fast-moving sector. I can get the rationale for why it was set up, but there is a real trade-off between those who provide the payments infrastructure and do the transactions and the consumer interest. Is it not possible…”

“The FCA is a massive organisation. I think it employs well over 5,000 people. Functions are added routinely by Governments, including mine previously and perhaps this one. I wonder how you see the utility of that narrative, “Merge us all together and remove overlaps”. There are also questions of being pushed into a gre…”

“In figure 1—I am not sure what document it was—you very helpfully show the complicated overlaps between the FCA, the PSR and the Bank of England/PRA. I totally respect that this is complicated, but some of these payments providers are also regulated in different ways within different parts of the FCA. Is that not the c…”

“You are confident that this is going to be an enhanced regulatory environment for the payment sector and will be positive for the economy and the payment sector?”

“You do not have to.”

“Can I explore this a bit more? One of the issues that came up when we had Baroness Manzoor in is that her view was that fraud is fraud. Fraud is still fraud if it is £415,000 or £85,000. You said that the recent evidence shows that £9.3 million is above £85,000, so it is less than 1% of total fraud. If you break down p…”

“They always say that, don’t they?”

“I have one follow-up question. In terms of the technical changes that have improved the performance of the industry, is there not a trade-off between delay in payment and safeguarding? One way they do that is to extend the time for a transaction to take place. Do you have any view on what has happened in that regard? T…”

“The final question, which your answer has provoked, Mr Geale, is around your jurisdictional authority over payments regulators and platforms. For the benefit of those watching the Committee, can you explain to us how you interact with the platforms? They are obviously, as you say, quite a key marketplace. Where does yo…”

“This is a recurrent thing that it is good for us to talk about here. You can do so much through payments providers and regulate them, and we have heard about the success you have had, but there is nobody who can really deal with those platforms, or is dealing with those platforms at the moment, that constitute a majori…”

“Can I get back into this cross-border interchange fees issue and the costs? Some of the providers, as you would imagine, have come and spoken to us. They have said that it was at 0.2% and they are thinking about a cap at maybe 0.5%, but their costs are much greater than that in terms of the maintenance of the KYC regim…”

“You do not see any meaningful reason why costs should have risen consequential of leaving the EU in terms of servicing inter-country transfers?”

“This is not criticism—I am just curious—but it has been three years. Presumably it is in their interest too to bring this to a conclusion, to remove it. Why does it take so long to get to an objective truth on what the actual costs are and therefore get to the bottom line of whether the cap can be verified?”

“Your candour is really appreciated this afternoon. Thank you.”

“Just to be a bit clearer on that, you would hope it is. What dialogue is going on with the Treasury about ensuring that it is?”

“When I was Economic Secretary, three or four years ago, I remember talking to my officials at the time about reforms to the Consumer Credit Act. There must be a cell of work that is going on there.”

“That is what I used to say to them as a Minister, because you cannot do much from just instinct.”

“Can I turn your attention to growth versus regulation? It is the area where there is a lot of focus at the moment. The financial services sector is a massive part of our GDP in the UK. We have the legacy going back to the previous crisis. The view could be that we put in place some pretty strong guardrails following th…”

“I recognise that that is likely to be the view of all regulators, because they are unlikely to say, “We have got it wrong over the last five or 10 years and have been holding competitiveness back”. You have given us a constructive perspective on what could change. Could I probe that a bit further? Could you try to char…”

“My colleague Dame Harriett Baldwin and I were Economic Secretaries to the Treasury and these conversations are probably more familiar to us. You were on TheCityUK council as well and we have had those conversations previously, but how quickly can we bring in some of these things? One thing that I am wary of is that, wh…”