My Lords, when this amendment was moved in Committee on 15 October there were 10 of us here at 10.20 pm. On that occasion my noble friend Lord Newby, summing up the debate, said that the amendment was superfluous, might have problems with EU law; and was,
“not proportionate or objectively justified”.—[Official Report, 15/10/13; col. 528.]
I shall endeavour to briefly answer those objections this afternoon.
Talking of superfluity, nothing in the Bill touches on the issue of gaming and gaming trades of all sorts. I will give a few statistics in a minute to show just how huge gaming now is in the City of London. Then we have the issue of the EU. If I may say so, it is slightly premature for the Government to anticipate the outcome of any recommendations that the review I am suggesting might come out with. That is a long way down the line: two and a half years is the time given for the review and heaven knows what that outcome might be, least of all whether it would be in any way in breach of EU law, which is in any event changing.
Lastly, perhaps the most important ground for rejection was the thought that this proposal to set up a review to look at the effects of gaming on the wider culture—social, ethical and cultural as well as economic and commercial—would be unnecessary and objectively unjustified. If one considers that these gaming trades now amount to many trillions—some estimate quadrillions; I had never heard that word before—it seems bizarre to say that this modest proposal is disproportionate.
The background to all this is the legislation brought in in 1986 in anticipation of the big bang. The Financial Services Act 1986 contained provisions that for the first time ever said that the gaming laws of the land would not apply to these City gaming contracts. Since then there has been a staggering explosion of such contracts. They are simply massive across the world, not just here. Derivatives, which are the most common form of gaming contracts or trades but not the only one, are largely below the radar, although steps are being taken to make them more transparent and measurable. The Bank for International Settlements has calculated this year that the value of derivatives alone—the over-the-counter derivatives, as they are called—is $693 trillion. Others reckon that if you add in the other form of gaming contracts, that goes up to a figure of $1.2 quadrillion in terms of face value, which may work out in real terms at some $20 trillion, or 30% of global gross national product—or gross international product, I should say.
Let us look briefly at the collapse of the world financial centres, particularly Wall Street and London. Lehman Brothers, had 1.2 million derivative contracts on its books when it collapsed in 2008, of which the face value was $39 trillion—that is one bank. It is calculated that 80% of the income of Lehman Brothers before it collapsed was from such gaming trades. Bear Sterns’ proportion of income from gaming was even higher than 80%. The statistics show capital debts of $384 billion against a capital of $11.8 billion; that is, 30 times more. If you look at the collapses of AIG, MF Global, Merrill Lynch, Northern Rock, Countrywide, Wachovia and so on, you will find in all cases that
derivative gaming was absolutely central, usually key, to them. I just throw that back at my noble friend when he says that a review of all that, in terms of its cultural outfall, is not objectively justified.
Banks of course are still doing it today and it is creeping up, and I have no doubt that it will go on and on with its potentially malevolent effects just as heretofore. Huge profits are made from these types of contract, but on the other side of the coin they are matched by huge losses, which was the principal spur to this devastating collapse, a collapse which, do not let us ever forget, was stemmed internationally only by Governments moving in with massive sums of money—what was it here, $800 trillion? Not trillion, million—or am I wrong?