MEP claims EU is 'fundamentally hostile' to IFAs

Eurosceptic MEP Godfrey Bloom claims there is "no political interest" in helping advisers, saying that politicians prefer savings to be controlled through large institutions.

Outspoken eurosceptic Godrey Bloom, UK Independence Party MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, has claimed in an interview with FTAdviser that the European Union is "fundamentally hostile" to IFAs as he warns that there is "no political interest" in helping advisers.

Mr Bloom, member of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, added that the EU ultimately had an end game of getting rid of IFAs.

He said: "The EU has been a great supporter of the bureaucratic and political banking class; it is fundamentally hostile to small businesses, including IFAs.

"The whole system of centralised stateism, which is the EU, does not like small business, just like our Treasury does not like small business and financial advisers.

"IFAs control something like 50 per cent of the UK's electoral savings and politicians hate the idea of not being able to get at that and control it. It is much easier to control it via nationalised banks."

Mr Bloom warned further layers or regulation imposed by the European Union were already impacting the UK's financial services industry.

He said: "There is no question, it is already happening. It is manifesting itself at the moment at the committee and first reading stage.

"It will start with things like derivatives and capital guarantees. You will see with one sweep of the pen they can get rid of the IFAs - which is the end game - through meaningless capital guarantees.

"In every walk of regulation that we have, they will set out the template of regulation and that will be the bottom line. On top of that we will get this system of gold plating regulation that the United Kingdom always carries out.

"Let's say the EU gives us a base line of 100 regulations, then whoever replaces the Financial Services Authority will say, 'right, we want 150', and they will add 50. They will add cost and they will add complication."

Mr Bloom said further regulation by the EU was unlikely to be favourable towards IFAs.

He said: "Nobody has any interest in helping the IFA, there is no political interest in doing so. They are regarded in the same way as Stalin regarded peasant farmers."

To read the full interview, click here