Members of the Treasury select committee are unhappy with the “strange approach” the FCA is taking in its dialogue with it, Mark Garnier has said.
The Conservative MP for Wyre Forest made his comments a week after TSC chairman Andrew Tyrie warned senior FCA executives about their lack of co-operation.
During a meeting with chief executive Martin Wheatley and chairman John Griffith-Jones, Mr Tyrie warned that the TSC had been gentle until now, but was preparing to take a firmer line with the FCA.
Mr Garnier said: “Our final comments were robust and, although we understand the FCA needs to work within a legal framework and cannot always put things out into the public domain, the regulator needs to report to parliament.”
He said the TSC was unhappy that the FCA would not even reach a compromise on providing some information about its workings on certain issues.
“This seems to be a strange approach with us that we do not like,” he said. “As a committee, we don’t want to go roughing up witnesses and we want to work with the regulator. But if the FCA just says no to us, it seems not to get the accountability bit.”
Mr Garnier added that things have not changed significantly since the days of the FSA, when former chief executive Sir Hector Sants told the industry to be “very afraid”, and the TSC issued a stern warning over the glib way in which the regulator refused to accept the TSC’s recommendation to delay the RDR.
He added: “The FCA will need to give better answers to us. We will have to wait and see whether they react well to our warning.”
It is understood that, over the year to date, the FCA has appeared before parliament on average once a month.
According to its annual report for 2013/2014, the FCA replied to more than 1200 letters from MPs.
A spokesman for the FCA said: “Since the FCA was set up we have committed to being clear on communicating our thinking and the way we work, and have promised to be open to scrutiny from consumers, firms and Parliament.
“In particular, we have considered again how much information we can make available on regulated firms and individuals. We will continue to review when and how we balance the competing calls of transparency and sound regulation, and the extent of our constraints.”
