Bradford & Bingley plc

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Philip Davies

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I hope you will convey my thanks to Mr Speaker for granting this debate.

As the Member of Parliament for the Shipley constituency, which includes the towns of Bingley and Crossflatts, where Bradford & Bingley was based, I have asked for this debate on behalf of the nearly 1 million Bradford & Bingley shareholders and bondholders who still do not know how or why their company was expropriated in a way that destroyed it as an ongoing business, unlike what happened to banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland, which had far weaker balance sheets.

I have also called the debate on behalf of the employees of Bradford & Bingley, many of whom had worked there for many years and were also shareholders. This debate is also important for the local community in Bingley and across the Bradford district, which has lost a highly valued brand from the high street. Bradford & Bingley had been in existence since 1851.

I thank many hon. Members for their support, both those here today and the many unable to attend. I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who has been extremely helpful and supportive. He is a champion of the many shareholders in his constituency who lost out when Bradford & Bingley was nationalised in the way it was.

On Friday 26 September 2008, in the foyer of the Oval Office of the White House, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), made the decision to nationalise Bradford & Bingley during a telephone conversation with his Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), who was in the UK. That decision was extremely disappointing for the shareholders, many of whom remain outraged by what they consider to be legalised theft. Indeed, it is a shame that neither right hon. Gentleman is here today to explain the part they played in the scandal.

Days after the telephone call, the Cabinet Office stated in response to a freedom of information request from a shareholder, Mr Jonathan Bloch, that it had no files whatever. David Blundell, the chairman of the Bradford & Bingley shareholder action group, whose main objective throughout has been to secure the truth on the nationalisation—he is also a director of the UK Individual Shareholders Society, a voluntary organisation whose main objective is to protect the rights of private investors—said to me at the time that he had difficulty believing that the Cabinet Office statement was true, and so it has proved.

After further freedom of information requests, the Cabinet Office finally admitted in 2011 that it did possess the relevant records, but it refused to release them on the grounds of public interest. The Cabinet Office also refused on the grounds of public interest to state whether the nationalisation decision had secured Cabinet approval. I put on the record my admiration for David Blundell’s tireless work on behalf of the Bradford & Bingley shareholder action group and his determination to get to the bottom of the events surrounding the nationalisation.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I put on the record my thanks to my constituent, David Blundell. He is fighting for the small person who invested their life savings in those shares and is now faced with nothing because of the decisions made at national level by the then Government. They have had no answers.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I know that he has been particularly helpful to the Bradford & Bingley shareholder action group. I thank him for all the help and support he has given to the many shareholders.

Surely the public interest demands full disclosure of the facts to secure the truth. How can the refusal even to release whether the nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley was ratified by the Cabinet ever be in the public interest in a democracy? Surely voters are entitled to know, let alone shareholders, bondholders and employees.

How do we know that the Cabinet Office’s original statement was untrue? I am probably one of the few people—I am sure you are another, Mr Betts—who has read the relevant part of “Beyond the Crash” by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, in which he admitted his part in the sorry mess. The shareholders would otherwise still be in total ignorance of the nationalisation process.