Speeches by Glen.

“That is very clear. Would you like to add anything, Mr Bhatia?”

“We heard that yesterday. Mr Davies, would you like to add to that?”

“But you see my point. Either you subscribe to the same model as everyone else—”

“You would not want to market yourself as a less secure place to put your money, would you?”

“Can we turn to financial crime? I am keen to explore your distinct views relative to the bigger banks, if you have any. Obviously, this is a big concern, and we are seeing a massive escalation. We were concerned as a Committee to see that the FCA is rather anxious about seeing just “slower growth” in financial crime—it…”

“But, presumably, they would say that you have to have a sufficient track record of solvent behaviour to show that you have not been at risk in that prior period to allow you to go it alone and do it in that way.”

“Can you explain that to us, and to those watching?”

“And you do not have the data to justify it.”

“Mr Mullen, is there anything you would like to add?”

“It would be helpful if you wrote to us on that, because that is detail that we value.”

“Is that because they do not want to be at a competitive disadvantage to the US or Europe? That is why they are holding back.”

“Let us be clear. In the UK, about 10 years ago, we set up the new banks unit—Harriett probably did it. The regulator looks after the big banks, but there is no regulator that looks proactively, with you, at this middle stage. You have set up and got your licence, but then you are in a bit of an abyss before you get to …”

“Do you agree with that, Mr Davies?”

“So they did not index the thresholds to GDP, which was one of the things you wanted a few years ago in the regulatory changes. Is that what you would like them to do? Is there anything else? Is there not also some ambiguity over the £15 billion to £25 billion window? How clear are they about when it actually hits? If y…”

“About 40 new banks have been created over the last 10 years, but the concentration of customer accounts still massively resides with five of them. You are examples of some of those new banks. One of the things that we want to get to grips with is regulatory burdens. You will have gone on a journey to get your banking l…”

“I could not resist it. I wanted to do something, but I could not for the reason that I have just described.”

“The question is, from a rational policymaking point of view, how do we achieve that outcome when, clearly, the argument is that we would be wasting money on people who do not need it—but then we do not get their behavioural change? What do you say to that?”

“On stamp duty, when I was a Minister, we looked at this principle of someone downsizing from, say, a house of £800,000 to one of £500,000, and the argument was that if you say that people do not pay stamp duty on the £500,000, obviously there is a lot of dead-weight cost, because of all that equity. What was happening …”

“Point taken.”

“If you are tracking the FTSE over 10 years on a tracker product, that does not really carry a big fraud risk, does it? What I am trying to get at is that there is a reasonable assertion around the mass use of trackers and low-risk equities, which is far better than the normal rate of return from interest over 10 years.”