Recommendation 13

Many of the strands of work included in the Edinburgh Reforms are not reforms, but are more preparatory work for potential reforms in the future and should be 28 Edinburgh Reforms One Year On: Has Anything Changed? treated as such. However, even among the reforms that we agree are genuine changes in regulatory rules, the categorisation of some as reforms to be championed by the Chancellor as significant and worthy of attention is unconvincing. For example, it is not obvious to the Sub-Committee how a small £25 million tax cut such as the reform to Real Estate Investment trusts, or a change to the Investment Manager Exemption to include cryptoassets, which is deemed to have no economic impact, sufficiently meet the Chancellor’s description of the Edinburgh Reforms, which he described as “a bold collection of reforms taking forward the Government’s vision for an open, sustainable, and technologically advanced financial services sector that is globally competitive and acts in the interests of communities and citizens. These reforms will create jobs, support businesses, and power growth across all four nations of the UK”.