In his first appearance before the committee, the head of the Financial Reporting Council called for five changes to bring the regulator ‘into line with other regulators’ while business minister Kevin Hollinrake MP, claimed that not everything is solved through regulation as ‘there’s scandals in our economy in very regulated sectors’, citing the financial services sector as an example.

Liam Byrne MP questioned Moriarty on whether he thought the FRC needed more powers going forward to which Moriarty pointed to ‘five things that are serious gaps in our regulatory toolkit’.

Moriarty said: ‘The first is the definition of public interest entity, it hasn’t caught up with modern commerce in this country.

‘