Hi John,
If Liz Truss as expected becomes prime minister next week, she will spend her second day in the job tabling a bill that could sow the seeds of the next financial crisis.
As I wrote to you in August, they’ve both endorsed the Financial Services and Markets Bill, a vast deregulatory bill at the heart of which are proposals to sweep away restrictions on food speculation, giving financial traders even more power over food and energy prices. On Wednesday, the bill starts its journey through parliament.
While rolling back the protections introduced after the financial crash in 2008 might be good for the City of London’s profits, it will be a disaster for the country, and a catastrophe for many people around the world. As MPs prepare to return to Westminster on Monday, it’s up to us to sound the alarm.
Ask your MP to raise concerns about the Financial Services and Markets Bill
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Gambling on food
We’re experiencing a sky-rocketing cost of living crisis, which will see poverty balloon. At the heart of the crisis are energy and food price hikes which have been driven by commodity market speculation. Banks and investment funds are gambling on basic products that they have no role in producing or interest in actually buying.
We’ve been here before. Back in 2008, a major food price crisis gripped the world, spreading poverty and panic. Behind that crisis, we found there was no actual shortage of food. Rather, financial markets were gambling on basic food stuffs, creating a crisis which left millions of people unable to afford food.
In the wake of that crisis, we campaigned for reform. We won a set of new rules designed to tame the markets. It wasn’t enough, and over time finance fought back and weakened the rules, leading to another food crisis. But rather than strengthen the rules, the British government is proposing to strip them away entirely, and hand even more power to the speculators.
We’ve got to stop them. Please write to your MP ahead of Wednesday’s debate on the Bill, and ask them to raise concerns about the scrapping of constraints on speculation.
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This is the first opportunity we’ve got to challenge these provisions in parliament. Raising concerns now will make it easier for us to build a campaign to amend the bill later in the Autumn.
You can’t deal with the cost of living crisis while handing more power to the very people who created it. Let’s stop this bill and work for a food system which meets the needs of everyone in the world.
Thanks for everything you are doing,
Nick Dearden
Director, Global Justice Now
PS: Learn more about food speculation and this bill in our new briefing, The Financial Services and Markets Bill: A speculator’s charter
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