I thank my noble friend for tabling this amendment, which seeks to include in the Bill a specific reporting requirement for regulators subject to the code to provide details of the activities, including costs, of any organisation employed to undertake work on their behalf. At the heart of the amendment lies a concern about the hidden costs to business. The example that he gave was that financial service regulators may seek to discharge their regulatory functions by using their powers to commission reviews by “skilled persons” and charging the businesses concerned for the cost of that work. As I understand it, that is at the heart of the problem that my noble friend has identified.
My noble friend is right to seek transparency and accountability about how these powers are used and I think that we have made some progress in this area. Both the FSA and the PRA now routinely publish information on their Section 166 Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 activity. This includes quarterly reporting on the number of skilled persons reports that they have commissioned and annual reporting on the aggregate costs of these reports. As my noble friend probably knows, this information is available online. It seems to me that the disclosure that he seeks is being addressed and I am not sure that there is harm elsewhere that justifies creating new regulation in this area. In the interests of brevity, I do not see a case to amend the Bill and ask him to withdraw the amendment.