Select Committee
Parliament

Conservative MP Steve Baker asks the witnesses if they think the public and media reaction to the decision was "out of proportion" to the "substance of the decision".

Ms McDermott responds that she feels "the reaction to this decision is partly based on a concern that it implied a change of direction by the organisation, which is not what this decision was; this was an operational decision about a specific piece of work". 

Mr Baker proceeds to ask Mr Griffiths-Jones how the FCA managed to not communicate this to the public and cause such a backlash.

The FCA Chairman responds that he feels media attention to the issue "would have been the same" if they had released the information in another way.

House of Commons
Parliament

Conservative MP Mike Freer says he wrote to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs about poppers, he says they told him that they "have not seen that poppers are capable of having harmful effects".

He adds that a man in Scotland wrote to him to tell him that poppers can be used to treat adder bites, which he admits are not common in his Finchley and Golders Green constituency.

He suggests that if the government is concerned, they could legislate to sell poppers through licensed sex shops which would give "some control" over who could obtain them.

House of Lords
Parliament

The day begins with oral questions on preventative medicine, the under-occupancy charge (also known as the bedroom tax), Syrian refugees and the recent floods in Cumbria.

This will be followed by a Labour motion concerning political funding from trade unions which is expected to lead to a vote and possibly a defeat for the government.

Peers will then move on to debate of the Immigration Bill at committee stage.

Today’s dinner break business debate looks at cancer survival rates. 

Select Committee
Parliament

Labour's Rachel Reeves asks whether the way that the FCA announced its decision to scrap the review was satisfactory, especially she says, "as your salaries are paid for by the taxpayers".

Ms McDermott replies that "one of the things we are considering is whether we should release information in a different way".

Select Committee
Parliament

Mr Griffiths-Jones is now responding to questions relating to the FCA's decision to shelve a review into banking culture.

Mr Tyrie is asking Mr Griffiths-Jones whether it was right that the FCA board was not consulted in the decision to drop the review when, as he puts it, it was a board decision to launch the review.

Mr Griffiths-Jones responds that the FCA board agreed to a business plan that included a "traditional thematic" review into banking culture but that this strategy subsequently changed and the board was informed of the decision.

FCA Acting Chief Executive Ms McDermott echoes this argument saying that the business plan set out the FCA's intentions on addressing banking culture with a thematic review but "those intentions changed over time - this was not a significant change of focus" - arguing that the FCA is still focused on addressing banking culture.

"It was a decision that the way we intended to do it was not the best way to do this," she says.

House of Commons
Parliament

As those tweets suggest, Conservative MP Crispin Blunt says he has used poppers.

"The issue is about supply," he says, "and what it might do to someone like me might be to put me into the hands of the criminals to get my supply for something I used to think was perfectly OK."

Let's have the evidence, he says, and then we can have a further discussion about this issue.

And he finishes by saying:

"I implore my colleagues at the very least, please don't be associated with putting this on the statute book," he says.

House of Commons
Parliament

Labour MP and chair of the Home Affairs Committee Keith Vaz says the effect of the bill should be to ban the substances which can cause illness and death.

Mr Vaz says he is surprised to hear the shadow minister Lyn Brown's assertion that ministers have stood at the despatch box having used poppers.

Labour MP Andrew Gwynne intervenes to say the story was that Ernest Bevin used the substance, after he was prescribed it for heartburn. "It is alleged he was sniffing poppers round the Cabinet table," he says.

Select Committee
Parliament

Andrew Tyrie kicks off the session by asking the witnesses "do you feel the FCA has been put under any political pressure to do anything that you felt would compromise the FCA’s independence?"

FCA Chairman John Griffiths-Jones replies simply "no I do not feel a sense of pressure".

Mr Tyrie asks about the decision of former FCA chairman Martin Wheatley to step down after the Treasury had decided not to renew his contract and whether this episode "compromised the independence" of the FCA.

Mr Griffiths-Jones responds that such a decision was entirely in the power of the Chancellor to make, although when pressed on whether the decision affected morale in the FCA, Mr Griffiths-Jones says that this is "a different thing".

"Clearly people who work in an organisation have loyalty to the leader at the time...so it inevitably had an affect on morale."

Select Committee
Parliament

Committee chair Andrew Tyrie begins this afternoon's evidence session with Financial Conduct Authority Chairman John Griffith-Jones, and Tracey McDermott, the Acting Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority.

The Treasury Committee regularly takes evidence from the Financial Conduct Authority as part of its remit to scrutinise their work.

House of Commons
Parliament

Lyn Brown, shadow Home Office minister, is talking about "poppers" and the proposed ban on them.

Poppers is a slang term given to alkyl nitrites that are inhaled for recreational purposes, especially in preparation for sex  

Labour does not believe poppers should be banned and Ms Brown says she believes the way they are used does not require the kind of harms that demand a ban.

Conservative MP David Davis also intervenes to say that poppers do not appear to be dangerous drugs.

The Home Affairs Committee recommended in 2015, external:

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, City of Edinburgh Council/PA Wire

Report stage to the Psychoactive Substances Bill begins.

The bill seeks to ban certain uncontrolled substances, known as legal highs, that mimic the effects of controlled drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, amphetamine, ecstasy and heroin.  

The substances have been designed to evade the controls set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

• It will be illegal to produce, supply, possess with intent to supply, import/export psychoactive substances.

• Legitimate substances such as food and alcohol are excluded from the bill, as well as controlled drugs which are regulated by the Misuse of Drugs Act.
• Enforcement agencies are to have powers to adopt a “graded response” to offences by applying civil penalties for some cases.

The bill applies throughout the UK.

House of Commons
Parliament

Unusually, Labour's John Woodcock is speaking in opposition to the ten minute rule bill by the SNP's Owen Thompson. He says SNP MPs should "know better" than to whip up fear, to "add fuel to the fire of their absurd argument".

John Woodcock says the SNP want to be protected by nuclear weapons under the banner of Nato, but don't want them in Scotland.

House of Commons
Parliament

The SNP's Owen Thompson is introducing his Ten Minute Rule Bill on the transport of nuclear weapons.

In his speech he highlights a series of incidents involving the convoys, comparing them to "Frank Drebin and Police Squad".

Nuclear weapons are transported in heavily armed road convoys several times a year between from Aldermason in Berkshire, where the bombs are assembled, to the Royal Navy's armaments depot in Coulport, Argyll.

House of Commons
Parliament

Keith Vaz, Labour chair of the Home Affairs Committee, asks if there was an "acceptance" that doors of asylum seekers' homes were painted a certain colour, if it was a policy by the company and when it was known. 

He says it's "appalling" if there was.

Minister James Brokenshire says he's aware that using one colour of paint is common practice among some social housing providers, but that this situation is different and that issue is what he's trying to understand. He promises to appear before Keith Vaz's committee to update them.

House of Commons
Parliament

Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald says 155 of 168 Jomast owned properties that house asylum seekers in the town have red doors. He says the red paint marks out the properties and the asylum seekers who live in them to those with "prejudicial intentions and evil intent".

He says doors have been smeared with dog excrement, had eggs thrown at them or been graffitied with National Front slogans.

He says he's "aghast" that G4S claim no knowledge of it. Additionally he criticises the government for contracting out the housing of asylum seekers. "These are not matters for private profit," he says.

BBC Tees
www.bbc.co.uk/BBCTees

The front doors of houses used by asylum seekers are to be repainted, after claims they were targeted because nearly all of the doors were red, BBC Tees reports.

Asylum seekers in Middlesbrough told The Times, external eggs and stones had been thrown at their houses because the doors made them easy to identify.

The immigration minister said he was "deeply concerned" about the issue.

G4S said there was no policy to house asylum seekers behind red doors but its subcontractor would be repainting them.

Read more here.