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Financial Services and Markets Bill

My Lords, this amendment has to be seen in the context of the statement by the Payment Systems Regulator on 7 June, which was only a few days ago. It seems to me that that is the key starting point. I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that that statement is enormously welcome. It states clearly that:

“For the first time, our new reimbursement requirement will introduce consistent minimum standards to reimburse victims of APP fraud”.

I do not want to detain the House by going through some of the detail of that because that is not what we are doing here today, but it seems to me that that is a significant step forward.

Secondly the PSR says quite clearly:

“We are increasing protections within Faster Payments”,

and that is also a key issue. There is a timeline in the statement which states that there will be consultation on:

“The allowable claim excess that Payment Service Providers can charge”.

That is to be done in August and the whole lot will be finished by October. I wish it were to be done a little quicker, but it seems an excellent start.

The only part of the amendment which I think is extremely valuable is the one-year report. Frankly, with the volume of illegal activity that there is at the moment, if it were me—and I was the marketing director at a couple of the companies I used to work for—I would not wait a year; I would like to see what happens within the first six months of the new regime being in place. Later on, you can decide if there is some consistent reason that you move to a six-month situation.

Finally, I would like to know exactly what the starting point was before the new regulations came in. At the moment, I do not know that we have any official statistics. We may do and, if so, it would be very helpful to the House to know, not necessarily at this moment but in the near future, the starting point for the number of these terrible situations that people are being faced with today.