MPs are meeting today for the first day of discussions around the Financial Services Bill.

The 20 members of the House of Commons Public Bill Committee on the Financial Services Bill will have until 20 March to go through the Bill line by line and propose and debate any amendments.

A controversial point in the Bill for the financial services sector is the decision that the Financial Conduct Authority will have power to ban products for up to 12 months.

This would be the first time a regulator has had the power to ban financial products before the products are launched.

The industry has called for this power to be scrapped but so far it has been kept for cases where products pose a risk of mass consumer detriment.

Any amendments will by voted on in the House of Commons.

The committee includes financial secretary to the Treasury Mark Hoban, shadow financial secretary to the Treasury Chris Leslie, shadow economic secretary Cathie Jamieson and Treasury select committee members Mark Garnier and Jesse Norman .

Chairing the committee is Labour MP for Knowsley George Howarth and Conservative MP for Gainsborough Edward Leigh.

The Financial Services Bill was published on 27 January and details the new regulatory regime of the tri-partite Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) and Financial Policy Committee (FPC).

The FCA and PRA will replace the current Financial Services Authority while the FPC will be independently run at the Bank of England.