Speeches by Grady.

“You cannot really say anything about those at that stage. I will not press you on that, Mr Geale. Have firms got better at detecting and preventing APP fraud?”

“On these investigations, is it public who is being investigated yet?”

“I was going to start with the national payments vision, but push payment fraud appears to be on your mind, Mr Geale, so let us have a conversation about that. You have expressed various concerns in discussions with Mr Glen about how banks are dealing with push payment fraud. Are there any particular concerns you would …”

“More generally, there are various bits of competition law that allow for market studies, remedies and things like that.”

“I have a brief question and a follow-up to Mr Dean’s questions. Things such as the Competition Act 1998 are getting on a bit. Technological change in this world is moving very quickly across the piece. Are you satisfied, at a macro level, that you have the legal powers to mandate the big financial institutions to adopt…”

“I have one more quick question. Will the FCA and the PSR review what has happened in this context and other contexts, review the legislation and consider whether there is a need to change it to give you more powers?”

“There is one last question on this. We have a Payments Vision Delivery Committee, a Retail Payments Infrastructure Board and a delivery company, Pay.UK. There are various bodies involved. Of course, complexity and blurred responsibilities are classic ingredients for cost overruns and delays. With this delivery infrastr…”

“I just have a brief follow-up to this. When economic regulators such as yourself make decisions like this, there is an inevitability that the industry gets tooled up with Magic Circle firms and eminent silks and juniors. You are facing a whole battalion of lawyers and expert economists and you are a small organisation.…”

“I am not entirely clear on when we are likely to see any kind of tangible outcome on this. Something that concerns this Committee is that it is ultimately consumers at the end of the chain who are experiencing regular payment outages and unreliable payments infrastructure. They do not distinguish between different bits…”

“Shall we move on to the national payments vision? The Treasury defined the payments vision in 2024 as “a trusted, world-leading payments ecosystem delivered on next generation technology, where consumers and businesses have a choice of payment methods to meet their needs.” That is very general. Are we any further forwa…”

“As a principle—I think everyone is clear on this—the social media companies are not doing enough to deal with this.”

“As the Payment Systems Regulator, you mentioned earlier, Mr Geale, the 50-50 split between the paying and receiving bank. Has the Payment Systems Regulator considered or would you consider something along the lines of a split of one third, one third and one third? Might that lead to such an incentive? At the moment, th…”

“Would it be possible to get data on that?”

“Presumably the FCA, the PSR and other people write to social media companies and say, “Could you take this account down? This account is fraudulent.” How long does it take them to respond?”

“On social media companies and social media, what proportion of these scams are conducted using social media?”

“Your position is that they could do more to prevent this. What would you like to see them do?”

“I have a question I would like you to answer yes or no to, and just stick with a yes or no, if you would. I have listened very carefully to what Mr McAteer and Ms Williams have said. One of the things I have been grappling with is that you have wider issues, such as poverty, and poverty causes financial exclusion, beca…”

“We in the Treasury Committee looked at this issue extensively, and I am unaware of any particular evidence that supports the behavioural arguments the hon. Lady is setting out. In any event, why should 95,000 bright and talented children in Scotland be punished by an utterly cruel policy? Is it not fatuous to suggest t…”

“Will the Secretary of State give way?”

“I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement, which faces into the world as it is. Des Browne, Baron Browne of Ladyton, is retiring from the other place after decades of distinguished public service as the Labour MP for Kilmarnock and the Defence Secretary and in his work on the prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons.…”