The Conservative MP brought up the issue during questions to the Chancellor in the House of Commons on Tuesday, pointing out the difficulty the committee had in getting the FSA to produce a report into the failure of RBS.
He asked: “Does the Chancellor agree that accountability to Parliament would be better served if the Financial Services Bill were amended to require the new regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, to respond to similar such reasonable requests from the Treasury Committee?”
In reply, George Osborne said he would “listen to any proposals put to us” and also pointed out that two clauses in the Financial Services Bill do require the new regulators to make a report when a regulatory failure has occurred.
“That trigger will be set out in the legislation, so we are providing additional powers to require reports when things go so badly wrong, as they did a few years ago,” he added.
However, the bill does not address the specific issue of the FCA having to comply with any requests from the committee.
Tyrie and fellow members of the committee have previously questioned the lack of accountability of the FCA, suggesting its board should publish full minutes of each meeting and calling for its CEO to be subject to pre-appointment scrutiny by the committee.
