As a regular attendee of TSC hearings I can assure you that we are already held very robustly to account for our activities – but I can see the point that some in Parliament have been making that if we do more rule-making, and with European Parliamentary scrutiny of rule-making no longer present, then we might be expected to do more to support Parliament in probing technical regulatory issues. Whatever Parliament decides on this, we look forward to engaging fully. International standards are another important safeguard. The UK has always been at the forefront of their development: with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England was the driving force behind establishment of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and supplied its first chair. We remain fully committed to the development and implementation of international standards, and this applies as much in insurance as it does in banking. Actions speak louder than words – Dr Vicky Saporta, who runs prudential policy for the PRA, is also a very energetic and successful Chair of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors. There is also an increasingly lively debate around our objectives and ‘have regards’. As with accountability arrangements, it may well be sensible for these to evolve as our role changes. And we need to be wary of the natural tendency of regulators to become strongly attached to the objectives Parliament has currently set for them. But I would offer two notes of caution.
But we are interested in having one or more independent checks that the combination of actual capital held by firms and the shape of their balance sheets and business models adds up to a sector that we can be confident is resilient to plausible shocks. This would support our supervision and enhance our ability to respond rapidly to crises; we have of course had to cobble this together for the purposes of Covid stress testing, but it should be business-as-usual. Getting to such a place would also further enhance our accountability by putting us in a better position to explain clearly to the broader public the resilience of our insurance sector. Conclusion I see many opportunities to improve things once we can emerge from our houses again into the brave new world of post-Brexit Britain. Top of my list is an improvement to my diet through an early visit to Nando’s in Vauxhall, which I’ve been cruelly denied by the combined effect of Covid restrictions and a surge of vegetarianism in the Woods household. But coming just after my PERi-PERi grilled chicken on the menu are the delights of the Solvency II Review and the Future Regulatory Framework. If we approach these dishes in a sensible way, and without indulging in too much extra-hot sauce, we can make some really important gains for the UK without weakening safety and soundness or policyholder protection. I am grateful to a number of PRA colleagues for their input to this speech, but in particular to Alan Sheppard.