RPC evidence submitted to Joint Committee on the Draft Financial Services Bill

Following up on our concern about FSA proposals to change the law of causation insofar as it applies to financial services ...

I am pleased to report that our evidence submission has been accepted by the Joint Select Committee on the Draft Financial Services Bill.

The large evidence bundle (including RPC's evidence at page 571) will now be used in preparing the Committee's report.  We will comment again when the report is published, particularly if our evidence is expressly discussed.  Once published, the report will be presented to both Houses, where it will inform the debate on the Draft Financial Services Bill currently passing through Parliament.

RPC's evidence was drafted in response to proposals put forward by the FSA, in its own written evidence to the Joint Committee and by Adair Turner, FSA Chairman, in the annual Mansion House speech, that Parliament should consider a change to the law of causation. We expressed concerns about the impact that such changes could have on the regulated sector by reference to recent court cases and regulatory decisions that either turned on the question of causation or would have exposed firms to far greater liability were it not for the causation defence.