Accountability of regulators Regulator engagement with HM Treasury, external stakeholders, and Parliament Accountability to Parliament Requirement for the regulators to respond to Parliament
The regulators will be required to respond in writing to formal responses to relevant consultations from Parliamentary committees. This will formalise an approach that is currently taken informally and seeks to ensure that there are clear expectations for how the regulators must respond to any representations from Parliamentary committees. The measure has been designed to support more effective accountability and scrutiny of the regulators by Parliament.
	The government considers that such an approach is appropriate due to the unique circumstances of the financial services regulators’ wide remits, and their position as independent public bodies which are accountable to Parliament. Parliament therefore plays a unique role, alongside government, setting the policy framework within which the regulators operate.
	There can often be a significant period of time between an initial consultation and final rules being published. Therefore, section 53 also requires the regulators to explain, when making final rules, how they have considered representations by Parliamentary committees. This ensures that the regulators provide a public explanation for how the views of Parliamentary committees have been considered. Where a committee has made an explicit recommendation in its representation, the government expects that the regulator would explain its response to that recommendation.