Last week, the UK government used the Queen’s Speech to announce a Financial Services and Markets Bill that will contain two new objectives for the country’s financial regulators: to promote “growth” and “international competitiveness”.
According to the government, this is part of wider plans to ensure financial services continue to deliver for individuals and businesses. But what “international competitiveness” really means is letting multinational finance companies make huge profits by taking irresponsible risks with taxpayers’ money.
At a time of global financial volatility, grave climate risk and a cost of living crisis, we should be very concerned about the signals these plans send about government policy priorities – and the ability of these new objectives to deliver benefits for the real economy.
