22nd March 2010

Meeting with Michael Fallon

Alan Lakey and I had a meeting on Friday in Sevenoaks with Michael Fallon MP. This was very kindly facilitated by Sevenoaks IFA Mark Watson who also attended.

The purpose of the meeting was to continue with the long-stop lobby of MP's. The suggestion by John Bercow MP, the Commons Speaker following our January meeting was that we should meet with Michael Fallon due to his highly important and influential position as Deputy Chair of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee.

The discussion was most illuminating, the plight of the many thousands of IFAs caught in the FSA's long-stop removal trap was discussed in some detail and it came as some surprise to Alan and I that Fallon had never heard about this problem despite having many IFA's within his area. He was as concerned as us all that legal statute should be overridden in such a cavalier way and that rights that apply to all citizens were removed from IFAs and in fact the industry as a whole without consultation, consideration or parliamentary statute.

Fallon's Parliamentary role means that he meets on a very regular basis with Hector Sants and in undertaking that role, he has promised to take this matter up with him at their next meeting and get back to us.

The Tory position on the FSA is clear and should they be voted into power in the coming weeks, the FSA will go. But, during our meeting, Fallon made it very clear that he had heard and understood the views of IFAs on RDR and in particular qualifications. He saw the move to effectively restrict one's right to trade by raising the level of qualification retrospectively was quite wrong and so for those IFAs in Sevenoaks I would say you have a friend that you should support. In addition, would all Sevenoaks IFAs contact him and make clear your views on RDR and of course the long-stop- the more noise we make with those in positions of influence the better.

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