 Alright, it's nice to see a full room here everybody, it's Financial Services at 9 a.m. It's always really enthusiastic. So welcome to this morning's panel, we'll be discussing the future of money and banking and labor's vision for the financial system. I'm Kalina Makordov, the banking correspondent to the Guardian and I'm joined this morning by Angela Eagle, Lane Granpe for Ligranpe for Walsey and a member of the influential Treasury Select Committee. We have Fran Boyd, Executive Director of the Campaign Group called with Money and Ross Borket, Head of Banking at the Post Office. We will be joined by Tulip Siddique, she's just running a bit late but we will make sure we have plenty of time hopefully to ask her questions as we arrive. As we settle in, there's obviously a lot to discuss and I kind of wanted to take a moment to sort of set the scene on the state of the UK's financial sector. You know, gathering just a few weeks ago we had a bunch of banking bosses, insurance CEOs at number 11 meeting Walsey Quarteng for the first time where he promised a so-called Big Bang 2.0. This comments seemed to signal a return to the sudden deregulation of financial services in the 1980s. A move that he has promised would boost growth, attract new talent and usher in a new era of prosperity for financial services. And what followed, of course, was Friday's mini-budget which amongst its many controversies was also seen as an attempt to lose the city with policies that would cut costs by slashing taxes, prop up the mortgage market through stamp duty cuts and boost pay for bankers by scrapping the bonus cap. A move that was originally meant to curb the kind of risk-taking that we saw in the lead-up to the financial crisis. And this is of course on top of post-Brexit changes that we've seen through the financial services and markets bill which is currently going through committee, which I'm sure we'll get into, there's plenty to chew on. But part of these concerns on the bill come around government's intervention powers, if they disagree with regulations and the reinfections of a competitiveness objective, which means regulators would have to consider whether our rules make financial services competitive on the global stage. This move, some economists have warned would be a throwback to the conditions that contributed to the financial crisis. And the Treasury yesterday confirmed that next month the Chancellor will quote, outlying regulatory reforms to ensure that the UK's financial services sector remains globally competitive. So this is unsurprisingly all sparked fears of a regulatory risk to the bottom. But I'm hoping today we can sort of take a moment to stay calm, pause a bit, and critically think about what the future of banking, money, and payments could look like. What a system for everyone would require, how that would account for financial inclusion, what that would mean for regulators and their resourcing, and how we could harness technology and developments around innovation, like digital currencies, to achieve that. And of course, for our labor representatives, what the party's vision for the money and banking system of the future would look like. And I wanted to actually start with Fran Voight to give a sort of an overview of the current issues that positive money is focused on, the financial sector, how you think is the future, particularly with technology and versioning innovation in the financial sector. Thank you so much, Nina. Thanks for that brilliant introduction. Satisfying what's happening right now. So positive money's starting point for this conversation, I guess, is no matter where we're from or what we do for a living, we all need access to money to buy food, to pay our rent, or mortgage, and make payments. Money is an absolutely vital tool for a modern functioning economy, society, democracy, and we need a banking and investment infrastructure to get money to where we need it. Small and medium-sized businesses supporting our high streets, face-to-face banking for those who require it, and particularly to help finance a green transition. But over a decade on from the financial crash, we aren't where we should be. We've got millions of households struggling with storing costs at the same time we're seeing the city's bumper executive bonuses being back alongside the renewed deregulation agenda, much like the one that paved the way to the crash. And as Nina mentioned, under the guise of international competitiveness, the city and the government are seeking to double down on finance-led economy that serves global financial markets as a priority rather than supporting communities, businesses, and the green transition. And the numbers speak for themselves, so less than 5% of new banking goes just more on medium-sized businesses, of which support 60% of private sector employment. We know banks have been rapidly disappearing from the high streets and taking within crucial face-to-face services millions to rely on. The biggest banks in the UK, Barclays and HSBC, have poured $300 billion into fossil fuels between 2016 and 2021 in direct contradiction to the Paris Agreement. We have 11 million people falling behind on their bills, and then the UK credit card-borrowing is reaching, is rising at the fastest rate in 17 years. I'm just going to ask you to maybe move over because we've still got an audience members coming in, which was really great, but I'm still willing to thank everyone, appreciate it. I'm just very excited to have so many people interested in the future of money and banking. I thought you were giving money out of it. I'm just cross on. I do get confused with the title of our campaign with positive money. So yeah, we have huge levels of household debt, and I think our final panel member has arrived, so please let him through. So we have really... We've been through a lot of trouble here. Let's move up. So we have really high household debt, which obviously puts financial stability at risk, and obviously on top of that, we're now in a recession, and thanks to the many budget on Friday, the panel is plummeting, meaning lots of imports will go up. And we've also seen in the last few weeks, the government was removing the bankers' bonus cap, rumors that they want to merge the three key watchdogs, all signals that trust and clarity and belief and oversized deregulated extractive rent-seeking city, despite the damage it's done in the past, should be a big part of the UK's economy's future. And it's not just civil society that raised the alarm. The proposals have been criticised in different ways by regulators, by the former, this is actually Vince Cable, and even industry heads, CEO of Lloyds. And it's something you put on Twitter on Friday, even though the bankers are betting against the bankers' budget, so they clearly don't believe in this agenda to an extent either. So there is also clear evidence from a report we launched, we launched earlier this year for the power of finance, that the reforms aren't always necessarily a result of broad ideological belief, but the result of successful lobbying from the sector, which has the biggest lobbying power and a disproportionately large influence over policymaking. So where are the opportunities? Where do you want to change? Well, the first place for positive money is that the Bank of England is right now exploring a digital version of cash, which could be introduced in the UK in the next five to ten years. We see this as a really critical opportunity to bring about a safe, secure payment system with universal access and obviously critically for increasing financial inclusion. We're partnering in the post office in part because we think the post office already played a crucial role in providing face-to-face services, but they could provide access be the front-end of a digital version of cash and expand financial services in a similar way to the way that Labour first introduced the first computerised payment system in the post office gyro bank in 1968. So harnessing technology we have now for the modern economy, giving ordinary people access and central financial services they require. On top of this, we think it's key that the Bank of England work with the Treasury at the moment, as someone said, we've got them on the break for an empty accelerator at the same time, which isn't helpful. They need to work together to shift bank lending of speculative activities and property markets and speculations such as driving up the cost of food where people can't afford to eat. We need credit to be going into the green transition delivered by an ecosystem of corporatively or publicly owned banks, which can be amended in our communities and deliver what we need in terms of the green transition. So that's where positive money is in terms of our vision and critically right now, as Collina mentioned, we've got a government really really dedicated to this deregulation agenda. So we're hoping that when we launch a campaign next week, which is to stop this deregulating the city. Torrefog. We'll have support from Labour MPs in terms of our demands on trying to tackle this. And they are around ditching the international competitiveness objective, giving regulators a new statutory objective to align with Paris, giving regulators a responsibility to guarantee access to basic financial services, to abandon the proposals to remove the restraints on commodity markets, to clamp down the unparalleled influence of big banks on politicians and policymaking, to introduce processes that give civil society an equal say to the financial sector and to maintain the cap on the bank's bonuses. There's obviously a lot to do, but we're really excited for this. Today we can start this combination. Thank you. There's a lot to unpick on that when we get to questions, but Kulipal, we have you, the city minister, wanted to turn to you to kind of give us the party's vision for finance and banking. No pressure, obviously. Just to think about how, we were talking at the beginning, obviously, but all the changes that have been trailed or finally announced by quasi-quarting are just pushed towards deregulation that seem to be, again, setting up a financial system that perhaps is not as equitable as we would be hoping to. So how would you ensure a more equitable financial system? Sure. So thanks very much. Thank you for inviting me to speak here. We have been having a big conversation about money and cash, and is there a revolution going on? And some of the conversations that we're having with Treasury, it does sound like there's a major revolution, a bit like 300 years ago when the bank note first emerged. And I think it needs to be a bit of a nuanced about this, because when I first started speaking to Treasury officials, the conversation around crypto sounded like it was like a potential revolution in the way we exchanged goods and assets. And I think there was a talk about does it replace central banking? Is there digital gold? Is there an upending of regulation in markets? And the potential surveillance of consumers? And I should say, I had the Treasury very interesting because the ministers kept changing one after another, and every single one had a different view on crypto. John Glenn took quite a nuanced view actually, and I shadowed him for a while. And we got on to Richard Fuller and now we're on to Andrew Griffith. So I'll have to see what Andrew has to say about it, but the conversation I've had with my opposite numbers, I think one of the things we've reached a conclusion on is that the realities of geopolitics, the corporate power and illicit finance it sort of showed that crypto currency wasn't the utopian project that everyone initially thought it was. And a lot of people are questioning now whether crypto has a future at all, but that's the first thing. But some of the techs people I'm speaking to, the tech space seems to be distinguishing between crypto currency itself and the technology that underpinsed crypto currency. So DLT and block change, everyone knows what I'm talking about, but that seems to have brought about a difference from the initial conversation we had about crypto. And in my opinion, as I've been saying to the Shadow Treasury team, I think blockchain technology does have advantages. I think there are benefits. I think it could bring productivity gains to a number of industries. And I think that in the long term, probably blockchain technology will outlive decentralized crypto currencies. I think it will. But it sounds more like an evolution in money and banking rather than a revolution. I think it's more of an evolution rather than a revolution. And you talked a bit about the Bank of England because we had a big briefing with them about how blockchain technology can be utilized by a central bank digital currency. I thought it was a very interesting presentation that they had. I'm supportive the Bank of England's work of this. I think it's ironic that the innovations that started in crypto space may strengthen central banking rather than undermining it now as well. But the presentation we had was definitely in the preliminary stages of the Bank of England but it sounded like they were working on it quite hard. So I think we'll see more of that coming through. But I also didn't want to just talk about cryptocurrency because in addition to being Shadow City Minister I'm also the MP for Hampstead and Kilburn and this old fashioned cash which is quite a big topic right now in my constituency, especially in the more deprived parts of Kilburn. I do welcome the provisions in the financial services and markets bill which I'm leading on from the party which protects cash and the access to cash. What's worried me about that whole thing is that it very much seems to be temporary measures. So when I'm speaking to the ministers it sounds like they're saying let's protect cash for now. But this is a temporary measure because soon enough we won't be using cash and that does worry me because if you visit the elderly communities and a lot of the hard to reach communities in Kilburn actually they use money, especially now in the cost of living crisis, to budget. So we do have to ensure that we have the access to cash. In the, I don't know how many of you watched the second reading of the financial services markets bill I wouldn't blame you. But the question that we raised constantly from our side from the labour services is will people have free access to cash and that's and actually the minister wouldn't answer me on that and I even intervened at the end and said please could the minister say whether it's free access to cash. It wasn't just from the labour side, some of the Conservatives MP stood up and asked the same questions, especially if they're in a rural constituency. I'm not in a rural constituency but there is still a question of do we have to pay £3 every time we try and take up £5 which just seems ridiculous to me. I'm not going to be taking money out of that. They haven't committed to that. That's one of the things we will be holding the government to account on the free access to cash. So I guess my worries are is it a temporary measure? Are they going to be taking this seriously? How do we ensure no one gets left behind when it comes to access to cash? The narrative at the moment it feels like inevitable decline. That's certainly the narrative I'm getting on notes and bank notes. But it's also the access to face-to-face banking services which we've been asking about. Angela this will probably be more relevant to your constituency than to mine because we have a bank. We have bank closures all the time on our high street but then there's one very close by that other people can go to whereas if you're in a constituency which maybe doesn't have as many bank branches you will have to have a debate about that. So one of the things that we're having conversations at the moment about with the Treasury is central banking hubs. We'll have to see how we do that because it might be a hub where all the banks will have the access to service. It might not be an ideal solution but it does at least ensure that people have some access to banking services. So lots more to say but I think it leads to the rest of the panel but I'm sure there'll be questions on this as well. Well then that very easily leads on to Ross at the post office you know thinking about banking hubs which I think we only have two at the moment there are many promises to proliferate that and you are involved in that project. For many people as these bank branches shut the post office is sort of left to cover those services for those left in the community so I wanted you to sort of take us through how the post office is currently helping meet people's banking needs. What the opportunities and limitations are and what role do you see the post office playing and ensuring that this is financial services. Morning everybody, my name is Ross I'll start with what we do today so across our eleven and a half thousand branches across the country we're providing free access to cash and that's a cash deposit of deposit and cash reports and historically we were quite known for giving money out you know past you'd come in and make a pension out or people would come and get access to cash and that has changed over time and now we are a place where nobody can get money but you deposit and we in August transacted over three billion across our counties in one month and two million of that's money coming in and as banks have been closing people are becoming more and more reliant on the post office for being able to deposit by a significant number of people and we've seen in other countries that towards a more cashless society they've had to start rowing back on that because they have left people behind and while I think we will see it decline I think it will plateau I think there will be a long long tail of people continuing to use cash I think it's going away anytime soon and it's a worry to sort of hear them regulations might be temporary so we genuinely think access to cash is should be a right to what we all have and therefore we absolutely welcome in fact through Parliament we have been lobbying for a while and this needs to be sped up we're losing about 50 bank branches a month and it has taken two and a half years to get to second reading we just need to get this in now and while it is addressing cash I do think it is missing something around basic banking and and I think we'll have to go back to bank clubs in a moment we've definitely seen where they open they will need to put this in place beyond cash services what I would say is even without the legislation being there has already been good work in advance for the legislation arriving and the cash action group that the banks formed last year has been doing some really good work in bringing on the biggest banks of the society together to collaborate they are not well known for working well together I should say and I haven't worked with 20 of them on a daily basis they are hard to work together as a group they have come together and they have made some really positive progress in the last year we now have 25 banking hubs announced and I'm sure there will be more announcements going forward and we are announcing that some of the first of the next batch will be open before Christmas this year and Post Office has an important role to play in that because we can provide our universal access to cash in communities while the bankers turn up and provide our face-to-face community services that in lots of places we started to lose so looking then forward and looking at more rounds where for example a digital currency could play we can see how Post Office already centrally in physical cash could play a clear role in a digital version of that helping access to it clearly making use of the fact that we have a physical network, we have people in the community and thinking forward into what a physical public asset like Post Office could be best used for and that's not just what we currently do in the Post Office not just in other financial services but as you look at what the government is struggling with how can we collectively bring all these public assets together to do something much more community focused and hopefully more resilient going forward so really looking forward to getting into the debate today thank you Angela you sit on the influential Treasury Select Committee and you have the honoured task of organizing all of these regular story changes that are coming down the pipeline so I want you to perhaps give us a broad overview of what you think sort of the challenges and opportunities are when it comes to the future of finance and of course reflecting on yours for the U.A. policies on the committee one of the things that a previous Treasury Select Committee said which when I was on it I think I've been on it three times over the time that I've been in Parliament was actually to force banks to say at the top of any of their machines whether the cash that you were getting out was going to be given out free or not right up front because prior to the Treasury Select Committee of previous one doing that people would go all the way through the process and suddenly find right at the last minute that they were going to be charged so if they're left to their own devices quite a lot of the organizations that provide these services and they're not all banks will not tell you about the charges until the last possible minute when they have to do and so I think the first thing I'd say is transparency has got to be up front I think there's something horrible about being charged to get access to your own cash which is more horrible when the charges are a percentage of the resources you've got higher because you haven't got much and of course if the market is left to itself without some of the things that we could move through a hero route earlier that's where the charges land and people don't have a choice and so what we've always got to bear in mind when we think about how cash might evolve and how access to your financial resources might evolve electronically or in any other way you've got to think about the poorest with least choices those that have not connected to the systems they don't have their apple pay it's not only older people it's poorer people it's the unbanked previously the Labour Government did decide to do something about financial exclusion and the unbanked but the problem was they couldn't make any money out of them and in fact they didn't want to host those kinds of bank accounts because it literally didn't make them any money at all and so what they did was they started charging in a way that came through quite directly in my casework in the river for those of you who don't know where it is that's why the sun set and what happened was that those with the least would have a basic bank account which their benefits would go into but the money to take out bills that they had connected up would not coincide with then the benefits went in and so what would happen then is they'd be hit with charges that were ridiculously high and be in complete debt and come to me in tears you can't ask people who need cash to budget so they know where they are to join a system even if it's free which does that to them and unfortunately lack to their own devices the financial service industry does that to them and so I think that we've got to talk about how the financial services industry more widely serves the British people a lot of it at the moment I mean it's a structure that can't be changed without outside intervention it's very based on commission sales forces selling people stuff for money financial advisors all of that sort of thing it gets more and more complex the more time goes on the pricing structures are completely on a obtuse you have to be an expert to navigate your way around it and you know at the same time that these are sales forces they're not giving you facts they're trying to sell you something and when I was Pensions Minister I used to have to go to the conference the Green Eagles Pensions Conference where up in Scotland you find yourself in the room with probably the fund managers that have got half of the country's investment capacity in their hands and they always complain and say we need more financial education this is the cry you get the whole time from the financial services industry which created one of the most complex obtusely priced structures that nobody in their right mind without a degree in the prices of financial services could understand and the fact is we need simplified products that are easily understandable with their prices upfront and transparent what we don't need is 50,000 different rates of annual interest all calculated differently so when you compare them they're completely meaningless and they're designed to be completely meaningless to pull and so I think we just need a different way of looking at financial services now this is more radical than anything she's on the front bench and I don't have to talk about these things but the consumer rights and the consumer angle of financial services is weak because financial services are such a strong lobbying group and they make so much money with the system and the way it is but what's happening is the system services fewer and fewer people because it's so costly with all its infrastructures so it services fewer and fewer people who have higher and higher levels of income that they want to invest and pensions that they want to invest which is why the next pension system is so good because it's simplified it's properly run it's publicly accountable and I'm very proud to have helped set that up when I was a pensioner and so we need more stuff like that so that we can switch around and focus on all the way the financial services work to do that on cash nobody's mentioned COVID and the lockdowns and how that actually accelerated the technological change that's leading lots and lots of people to not use much cash if they've got that choice that's very convenient for people convenient for local businesses because they don't have to go to the bank with big bags of cash and do all the accounting and all of that, it happens automatically so we are going to go to places like that the more that technology allows that to happen and I think the important thing when we do that is to create simplified, easily accessible structures so that the convenience of that and being able to deal with that can be made available to more people I agree that it's not going to be for everybody so we have to have a residual process that people who don't have access to that or can't remember the 50,000 PIN numbers that we're all meant to deal with anything digital these days can actually do so I think we'll be running parallel systems for a while but what we need to understand is that we have pricing transparency the blockchain and the different structures that can deal with that open source banking where you can see things happening in real time could decimate employment in the banking industry because you don't need all that structures and the layers of different people to handle the transfer of cash but if that does happen that technological change has got to lead to easier access to banking and some of the money that's currently being used up in structures needs to be made available to ensure that this stuff is widely disseminated and everybody can have access to it so that's just a little bit of my comments on these things I think there's a huge issue about the financial services stuff and the changes the Social Security Committee is now going to have to be a sibling committee to look at all the stuff that the EU used to look at it's highly technical there's no B11A because we're doing it we already have two meetings a week it's very very difficult to get down to the detail of some of this techy stuff but the techy stuff is where the devil is and if you get it wrong you can end up where we were in 2008 and so I would be alarmed someone who wanted to deregulate the system like our current chancellor does so soon after the banking crash before there's really proper reform we've had the phasal and the different things to make banks safe but we've got the non-banking shadow banking system now which is much more of a threat than it was when banks were allowed to behave like shadow banks and our behaving or hedge funds I hesitate to use that phrase after the shorting scandals but what we know is that they are there to make money they don't have a moral view of it and they will do whatever you let them do if it's comfortable and that has potential consequences for the financial system because it's so connected and it's going to be more connected and faster because of the technological change and that means that the regulators have got to be much more proactive and there's a capacity issue with regulators across the world not only central banks but the FCA type regulators the people that regulate insurance and other financial products and you know non-fungible tokens any sort of crypto we get is going to add another layer to that and potentially more sort of volatility if we don't get a handle on it so these are big huge issues that have the potential to cause real problems if they go wrong as we've seen before and you know we've got to make certain that those who are regulating not only central banks try to keep ahead and on top of the innovation that's going on and I think if you look at NEST which is a publicly provided pension fund which is getting bigger and bigger and bigger as more people go into it that is going to be able to shake the market in future and you need the presence of things like that that are accountable that gather funds that are doing it in the public interest not to make a profit in some of these other markets I think to ensure that you get the presence of decency and not just rapid money making and down the consequences applause yeah so definitely touched on quite a broad range of topics as this financial services this is my issue every day there's too much to discuss but there's one thing I kind of feel is pulling through this which again is a sort of financial inclusion line I was really interested in what you said about we were very excited about digital currencies the prospect of what that could mean but really it's about the infrastructure now we talked about COVID kind of accelerating this move towards sort of a more cashless maybe card based system but it almost feels like we're about to head into a test of that if we're going to be getting an energy crisis that challenges our ability to keep the lights on for technology to keep working I feel like cash continues to be key or king to some people I'm just wondering what current conditions anyone feels in terms of sort of energy security are perhaps going to give us an opportunity to revive concerns about cash use beyond sort of just sort of people who are unbanked on a financial inclusion level which is really going to be something that we talk about sort of every day in order for our economy to continue working I'm a friend I guess absolutely protecting access to cash is absolutely fundamental as you said not just for now but for the future and I could talk about some of the issues that happened in COVID there's a lot of evidence to say it was it wasn't worse for transmitting COVID like card was worse if anything but obviously there are lots of benefits as you mentioned for small businesses we need to protect cash beside that obviously we think we need a digital cash version which the biking authority researching and that can't replace cash for lots of reasons particularly about inclusion physicality and the abacus effect of cash is crucial and you can't count kind of digits but you know just drawing on what Angela was talking about Ness like what we see is the potential for a digital cash and a cornerstone of a public payment system so we actually build a payment system in the public interest which we don't have like we're totally relying on our biggest bank for our payment system as I said at the beginning we all need to make payments and that's kind of separate from what the complexity of what banks do in terms of investment and shadow banking it is kind of a utility like turning the water on turning the lights on so having a public payment system of all of us of the many of these very basic payments and financial services then we start to shift the whole system because we have that protection at the moment we have very concentrated banking sector the five biggest banks have I think 60 or 70% of total banking assets one of them goes down they bring the payment system to a collapse and you know so therefore they're too big to help we can't let the payment system grind to a halt we're having a public payment system that's secure, that's safe, that's universally accessible that's separate from big banks then we actually start building a more secure, more stable financial system that can work for many and actually have the kind of boring side of banking and making payments obviously that doesn't negate all of the conversations around cash and how critical that is in the future of financial inclusion anyone else want to pick up on that some of the points around COVID actually we saw the client the use of cash the worst of it and there was the concern of our transmission we've seen quite obviously we're doing more cash now than we were before COVID and I think there's a few things playing out one is I think as energy crisis is going up we are seeing people turn back to cash to help budget it is far easier for many people to be able to see in front of the budget that way and we see in particular payments over the counter as well pre-paid energy customers we see people come in and top up a few pounds at a time whatever they can afford to keep heating on and I think we're going to see more of that as we go into this winter where people choose to operate in cash and they choose to pay when they can and do what they can on that from a business perspective though we've also seen businesses go the other way and get rid of their cart machines because the merchant fees are so high that it is not making sense it is really hard on the high street right now and the cuts that it's taken by having to deal with the card it's too much for some people and they're moving back to cash they can come and bank it at the post office and actually that is a cheaper way of operating than going the other way and going cash to us I guess on a very basic level when I've spoken to these patrons some of them have said to me the main reason I want to use cash and have access to it is because it's easier to budget and it's a very simple thing to say but maybe some people are not digitally so savvy and they can't go online and make a record of how much money they have and how much they're spending and it sort of struck me because I'm so used to having my phone all the time and writing things and access to online banking is so easy for me it's not the case for everyone I think we can't leave those people behind but just to make another point on the demand for a digital currency I think if the demand does increase then I think this idea of a central bank digital currency will strengthen I think to protect the integrity of the Bank of England and I think at that point there's definitely a consideration that large parts of the population will not be able to use that or access that and I think the idea of financial exclusion has to be a top priority and we've got to consider it to start considering the central bank digital currency and the other thing just as an aside is that there will be some questions about privacy as well and how much access they have to the amount of financial transactions that you make if there is a digital currency but overall just to add to what you're saying about financial exclusion it's the simple things that we possibly wouldn't consider because we're so comfortable with online banking and it strikes me actually that it's a good advice surgery how many people bring it up so it is the real consideration and a real worry I'm going to play devil's advocate on some things coming through on the financial services markets bill which is this prospect of government having intervention powers with regulators now obviously I think there is a warranted concern about this but when it comes to things like access to cash the way we want to structure the financial system with regulators to do in order to keep up with new innovations that they just seem to potentially be lagging behind on wondering if our labour panellists might be able to weigh in on the opportunity to see any of these interventionist powers coming down the track I'm worried about them and I did say in the second reading that there were some pretty draconian Henry VIII powers in this bill for the government a parliamentary technical term for the government being able to just write the law and not even bring it into parliament and so there's Henry VIII powers and there are also powers to override the regulator and I don't think you can do that without having proper accountability rather have an independent regulator or don't I mean quasi-potangious going to impose himself upon the government twice a week or two and what he said what does that do about the independence of England apart from wasting the government's time so I think that we've got to watch this very very very carefully and I don't think that the powers in the bill as it's written at the moment are very very wide ranging to allow the government to do what it likes without even telling parliament so that's got to change regulators will regulate according to the structures that the government puts in for them to do so and you need to trust them to do that and there has to be openness about how that is the values and the aims of the regulation and that has to be done by a parliamentary discussion and the government being up front about what its aims are if it's just allowed to write the law itself when it feels like it which is what the bill allows them to do at the moment I worry very much about what might happen with that given the lobbying powers of some of them all there are some ends of the industry and I'm not making a generic point here about all parts of the industry but there are some ends you know the shadow banking of the industries the financial services industry that have huge amounts of money I might even say that they fund quite large parts of the Tory party and they're not if they can just go to the government and get stuff written without anyone having to notice it that is a serious serious problem and it presents a problem of inside the dealing and corruption at the worst and so we've got to be very careful about allowing that to happen I don't think John Glenn wanted that to happen, he's perfectly decent man but the temptations inherent in the way the bill is written at the moment, I don't think they're good I agree with Angelina that I'm very worried about the intervention powers just to make it clear it wasn't in the preliminary discussions of the bill so when we first sat and talked about it and then just before the second reading there was a text saying this smuck in the intervention powers which I think it itself shows that they knew they were objected in the initial stages if they had talked about it I'm very worried about the intervention powers I think it will compromise the independence of the regulators I think it will affect the independence of the FCA I also think it's very worrying that they haven't actually published the details because I think it's always a bit dodgy when you announce something that means the intervention powers don't announce the details and then when I pushed the minister as well during the debate he said it hasn't been published yet and that's always a red flag for me and I also worry about affecting the competitiveness of our financial services generally I worry about the fact that it may impact the fact that we are a key financial hub outside the EU and I don't think it's a good thing you can hear by concerns about it already I'll wait to see what the full details are before I make a final judgement but we will probably from the Labour Party oppose the intervention powers because we think it undermines the regulators I wanted to give everyone two different points I don't have to but just very briefly I mean very much this is making steps towards the financial sector writing its own rules bit of the financial it's all locked but we have to recognise that they are the by far the biggest lobbying industry parts of them in the country where they have the most meetings in the Treasury every chance of the last 40 years has gone on to the financial sector job has some financial sector connected financial sector connected we've got so we now report on to others is there evidence that they have had a connection to the financial sector it has such a huge it's so connected to our our policy making it's a big issue the revolving door the lobbying influence and I think the other point around the calling powers is like obviously they're generally very dangerous but your point around financial inclusion if we want to but that further we need to just give the regulators the role of responsibility the financial conduct authority has no responsibility for being concerned about financial inclusion and the way that the regulators are going is that they just have this complex oversized sector that's kind of like a ticking bomb to an extent because of its instability to regulate so they kind of move towards being risk managers and they don't really have time ahead that the industry isn't providing the basic services we need so you have to you have to give them the responsibility to do that by adding that to their objectives so that's something that we're calling for with a whole group of civil society organisations as part of this bill among other things we'll just go into that alright so we're going to take just a two minute break for people to talk to each other about what we've just heard that sort of crystallised your thoughts for our question and answer period we'll be sort of coming back about what's happening because as we talked about already this complexity behind which the financial sector operates means that people feel totally disempowered to talk about it and we really are heading in the wrong direction on fraud on deregulation and a number of issues which will undermine the community's stability very quickly I want to add in to that point on crypto because we were looking into the fact that Gibraltar was set to open up one of the first exchanges for cryptocurrency we were talking to someone who used to work at the DOJ and they were saying the first mover on something like cryptocurrency that's going to be publicly traded would probably result in international sanctions and I think it requires a very careful steps in terms of how we can explore those opportunities versus risks let's go back to questions Hi, my bans I'm from Caldera I just want to take one issue with your panel if you can ask the question I'm not concerned about where the chances go to I'm more concerned about where they come from when you look at where the last few years of chances have come from actually maybe that you can then look at some of the mini budget on Fridays and you look at why those are in one that is more of a concern than where they go into Cryptocurrency always go hey look, what does the public want? Crypto How many times I'm a counselor I can't think of anybody who's ever spoke to me about cryptocurrency I'm working in a building society as well nobody in a building society apart from one fraud and she would ever talk about crypto unfortunately we stopped them sending all of their money out to some bank in Kazakhstan because when you actually spoke to them about it they thought they were buying a commodity they thought they were buying a product they thought we'd like gold or silver and what have you why do we not stop talking about people want cash absolutely we see a massive increase in cash for the very reasons we've all gone through but it's also people feel safe with cash they feel safe, they feel secure with cash Hi, I'm Navan from Brunswick banks like HSBC are doing quite a lot to support under-banked and unbanked vulnerable people in our society such as those from homelessness communities what can the future Labour Government do to support banks like HSBC to help those homeless homeless people to open bank accounts and be part of our financial community and then we have our former deaf thanks very much Diane Green, I'm the councillor from North Wales looking up a Gaelic we've been left with no banks if you don't know of a Gaelic it's a rural area, we've got lots of farmers who mainly deal with cash we've got lots of retired people who are not to tech savvy and they do like to go and choose accountants about 10 years ago when we started closing the banks I had this bonkers idea I think I woke up and thought why don't we have a general bank why has this not happened general bank run by the co-op the local party and the post office so it could be used as a hub with low interest rates but it gives people security of their money and it gives them access and a decent counter counter service so I was told a bit to hear talking about the hubs that are going to be growing and keep going please with the post office, it's our lifeline in Gaelic, thank you so not a question, just a remark those are three that we'll get started with and we'll try to get one more round in do you want to start with any of those in particular well I think we'll just be seeing all the work there doing good we need to make sure we don't fall into the same trap that we fell into when we last did this and I explained a little bit of how that worked out and practice for some people so there's an issue of charges and managing bank accounts that have got very small amounts of money and the timing of when benefits come in most payments come in and banks basically making money by making charges against people and the people that I met that had suffered from that were in a debt that they couldn't understand how they'd run up really frightened about it and wouldn't have touched a basic bank account again with a barge pole if they were ever given another chance it's a question of the practicality to pair this stuff with anyone want to talk about the public bank option layman just in response to your question we haven't entirely set out every detail of our manifesto but the things I can tell you for sure is that we will protect free access to cash and we will be protecting in-person banking hots whereas we don't know the full details of that we're exploring the solutions of is it a as you say everyone under one roof sort of banking hub or is it a kiosk but we're very aware of what you're saying and there's no doubt about it we can't live in a cashless society and we can't just have temporary measures I just wanted to say something by the way I think you said that it was a bit concerning that the government was talking about temporary measures they haven't actually said temporary measures the conversations we are having sound very temporary to me but in the actual bill it doesn't say temporary I just wanted to correct that unless I got into trouble and I'll just pick up quickly on what you said I agree with you the conversations we have are about cash and how to repay the things and the cost of food and commodities and how do I feed my children but I honestly think we can't ignore the cryptocurrency regulations the government has included the regulation of stable coins which is one aspect of it in the financial services and Mark is still coming up but I think it's something we can't ignore because of the illicit finance I outlined but also because of the amount of scam and fraud at least if there's some regulation and some sort of legislation around it there'll be less scam and fraud I don't think it's the number one priority in financial services but I really think the government needs to get ahead of the game just to protect people from the scam and for all that's happening What are your sort of points? Yeah I mean to your point really I think we'll obviously play that big role today in cash and providing that within communities and absolutely it could be something we'll start talking about central bank you could see how the post office with Bank of England could in partnership do something more there so I think there's opportunities to explore it it's a longer term vision that I think is worth debating Maybe just picking up on that I think the key to all those questions is trust right so we call the public a lot and there's very little trust in banks, the big banks very little trust in the city working in the public interest so that's why we really think we need this move towards some kind of public payments infrastructure that is separate that's in the public interest that people will trust and there's a big challenge to that being built in a way that public will use of trust so thinking about how the Bank of England could work with the Treasury and DWP to make this a place where everyone access payments, place to face as well as online I think is critical to building trust and actually having that conversation about what people need which is separate from the city and what's been on there and that's why we do see this opportunity for the post office being a key player in that but also not to negate the conversation that we need around the other kind of banks we need the community banks co-opted the owned, publicly owned that can actually also provide the finance we need for lending, for businesses which is a transition so we kind of see these two areas as the key conversations we need to be having and obviously we need to be thinking about trust because people don't trust finance right now Unfortunately we have come to the end of time everybody thank you so much It's interesting especially you know having opened up thinking about all of the sort of deregulation moves taking part sort of at high levels of the city and we really spend a lot of time focusing on the consumer issue so let's see whether that comes up as the months go on with the current government Before we close though can I ask the people here on behalf of the Post Office how many of you actually use Post Office banking most of the things you've done on this issue we've probably gone alongside what the Post Office did please use the Post Office Thank you for the formal comment I just wanted to thank our panelist of friends, Angela Ross and Tulip and thank you all for coming it's been a great journey Thank you