Banking Misconduct and the FCA

Debate between David Drew and Kevin Brennan

Thursday 10th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

This is an important debate and I congratulate all the hon. Members who have contributed to it so far. Banks occupy a very special and important position in our economy and society. Without them, the economy could not function efficiently. However, they also operate in such a way that they borrow short and lend long, and they always have done. As a result, banks hold a degree of responsibility and trust when they take people’s moneys into their care. I am afraid that over the past few decades, as other hon. Members have described, a culture has been allowed to develop under Governments of different colours to allow banks to basically follow the principle that “Greed is good,” as so well elucidated in 1980s film “Wall Street”. Ultimately, everything that has been described today—the disasters that have been brought upon our constituents—has been born out of the greed of bankers operating not in the interests of our constituents, but to line their own pockets.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that the situation is 10 times worse when the bank no longer exists? I have constituents who are still trying to work through HBOS, which is now part of Lloyds, which has washed its hands of it.

[Kevin Brennan]

I absolutely accept that; it is completely the case. I want to mention briefly some of my constituents who have been affected by what has been described today and by other practices that should be incorporated in the public inquiry that other hon. Members have called for. By the way, RBS has today been fined $4.9 billion by the American authorities for its activities when it was expecting to pay something like $12 billion, so if there is concern in the Treasury about the cost of a public inquiry, we have $7.1 billion available, given the assumption that was made by RBS, that could be levied on just one of the banks that we are talking about today to cover the cost of any public inquiry. I hope that the Treasury boffins have taken notice of that statistic.

My constituent Mike McGrath was also a victim of the kind of asset stripping we have heard about today. He can show quite clearly that Lloyds bank lied to the Financial Ombudsman Service to obtain a favourable judgment for itself and so that my constituents’ complaint was not upheld. The decision arrived at by the Financial Ombudsman Service was based on the probability of the evidence, but that evidence was incomplete, inconclusive or contradictory because Lloyds bank did not provide all the evidence that it should have done to the Financial Ombudsman Service. There was detrimental evidence that would have allowed the adjudicator to find in favour of my constituent—as the law should require them to do. Customers should have the right to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service and get it to adjudicate quickly, fairly and at little cost. That is why it exists, but Lloyds bank, and I believe others have done the same, has concealed detrimental evidence to prevent that from happening. This left my constituent with the only option of expensive court litigation, which he could little afford, having been ruined and bankrupted by his own bank.

This allowed Lloyds Wholesale Banking Recoveries in Bristol, with the aid of their appointed Law of Property Act receiver, Alder King, which we heard about earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), to strip the customer’s assets, knowing that the customer had in fact given the true account of the facts to the FOS and would have had their complaint upheld had Lloyds bank been truthful. My constituent can show that this has happened on more than one occasion. He believes not only that there should be a public inquiry, but that the Treasury Committee should look at the wider issues that have been raised in this debate and by this scandal for all the people who have been affected by different banks’ actions when the banks were bailed out by the Government.

Banks are still engaged in other practices that should be part of any inquiry. That includes what a constituent, Mr Iqbal Hassan, came to see me about last week—the way that a bank can suddenly close down their customers’ bank accounts without any notice. In his case, he simply got a text message saying that there were insufficient funds in his bank account and that it had been frozen. He then showed me the letter of apology he received from the bank. The letter gave absolutely no explanation of why the bank—it was Barclays bank in this case— had shut down his bank account. In fact, it said that it did not know why it had happened, but then, a day after that, it closed it completely. Many practices of that kind are going on.

There is also the negligence of banks in relation to customers being defrauded, often over the telephone. They rely on the concept of gross negligence on the part of their customers, which is completely unacceptable. A constituent—I will not name them here, because it is very difficult when this happens—at first lost over £40,000 as a result of this kind of fraud. Fortunately, through the help that I was able to give and through the help of people like Richard Emery—I commend him for his work on this kind of banking fraud—we were able to recover most of my constituent’s money. However, there are many similar cases in which Members’ constituents are not being refunded money that has been transferred from their accounts to accounts in other banks, which are taking no responsibility for giving harbour to criminals by holding their accounts and paying out money that has been stolen from our constituents.

We should have a public inquiry, and I urge the Minister to talk to his Treasury Minister colleagues about it. I know that he may not be able to make an announcement during today’s debate, but I hope he will go away and talk to his colleagues about the requirement for a proper, fully empowered public inquiry to investigate this scandal.