Hill grilled by UK Treasury Committee

The highest British official in the European Commission flubs questions on the Brexit deal.

Appearing before U.K. MPs Tuesday, Jonathan Hill, the most senior British official at the European Commission who is in charge of financial services, was berated for not being “completely up to speed” with the detail of the U.K.’s deal to reform its membership in the European Union.

Andrew Tyrie, the Tory chairman of the U.K. Parliament’s Treasury Committee, said that the deal, negotiated by Prime Minister David Cameron in Brussels last month, appeared to extend the EU’s powers relating to financial stability by going beyond the coverage of the Union’s existing treaties.

Hill responded that he did not see the deal as an example of “competence creep” but without having the text in front of him, he couldn’t give “a very satisfactory answer.” Tyrie indeed wasn’t satisfied and repeated his question several times.

Meanwhile, some other members of the Treasury Committee were worried about the impact the proposed financial transaction tax — currently being discussed by 10 EU member states, including France, Germany and Italy — could have on the British financial industry and asked whether the U.K. would be better off leaving the EU because of that.

Hill, however, refused to speculate on the outcome of the ongoing discussions, only saying that Britain would get worse terms outside the EU.

Tyrie also asked more than once why the bonus cap for bankers — one of the measures the EU imposed in the aftermath of the financial crisis — was not part of Hill’s portfolio. Hill gave a repeat answer that he had to accept his portfolio as it was and that the decisions at the Commission were taken collectively.

But according to an EU source that POLITICO talked to earlier, one of the reasons for this omission was that the bonus cap was considered too delicate a subject to be left in the hands of a British Commissioner given the possibility of a Brexit.