HBOS Reading: Independent Review

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the independent review of HBOS Reading.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. There are some fundamental business principles that underpin any free market economy: we compete on a fair and level playing field; we all have a fair, fighting chance of success; we all play by the same rules; and our regulations and the rule of law ensure, where injustices occur, that justice is done and is seen to be done.

Many people in the Public Gallery today no longer believe in those principles. They have been subject to scandalous, criminal fraud perpetrated by senior bank managers at Lloyds and HBOS. They have had to suffer further scandal at the hands of those at the highest level in the bank who, when made aware of the fraud, instead of holding their hands up to what had gone wrong, denied any wrongdoing for 10 years. Indeed, there is clear and compelling evidence that the most senior management sought to cover up the fraud, suppressed evidence, and used the HBOS review process, which is supposedly there to compensate the victims, to minimise payments and perpetuate the cover-up. Incredibly, our system—our regulators—stood by and allowed the fraud against the victims to continue.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman knows my view of him. He does an enormous amount of work on these issues, and I pay tribute to him for all that work. He will be aware of my constituent, Mr Alun Richards, whose business went under through the Lloyds Banking Group. He has mentioned public bodies, including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Serious Fraud Office, turning a blind eye. He and I have been working for a number of years to try to get those organisations to deal with these complaints. Millions and millions of pounds have gone missing. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a need for a fundamental review, led by the Treasury, of how we can get a better banking system that works for customers and is a lot more ethical about how it conducts its business practices?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I do agree. The sector is so far away from the banking sector that we need that fundamental reform is needed not only in the regulatory process, but in the mechanisms that enable victims to hold the banks to account, which I will come on to soon.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. One of my constituents, Michael Field, has been a victim of the banks as well. He borrowed from Lloyds to finance the building of several houses. He maintained his payments and fulfilled the terms and conditions of the loan agreement, yet Lloyds seized his assets and foreclosed on him. He then discovered that his assets had been sold on to another organisation within the bank. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government need to have parallel and very specific inquiries about the operation of Lloyds in relation to these and similar matters?

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman makes his case very well. The difficulty goes back to my point about justice being seen to be done. There is no mechanism currently. I cannot judge the guilt or innocence in the business relationship between his constituent and his bank. The key is to allow mechanisms for these people to take their complaints forward, without having to be subject to the one-sided, partial process that they are subject to today. That is what the Griggs review is.

I will now make a little progress, if I may.

[Alex Cunningham]

rose—

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I will give way briefly.

[Alex Cunningham]

I just want to make the point that my constituent fulfilled all the terms and conditions and maintained his payments, yet he has no recourse. I take the point about being able to make a complaint, but what happened should never have been allowed to happen.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I agree, and there are many cases like that. I will talk about the redress processes shortly.

There are three elements to what we are discussing: the fraud itself, the potential cover-up of the fraud, and the review that supposedly provides justice for the victims of the fraud. There were finally convictions for the fraud in January 2017. Six people, including three former HBOS employees, were convicted of defrauding business customers over 10 years earlier. More than £250 million in total was defrauded, and the people who were guilty of the crimes got 47 years in jail.

Many people lost millions of pounds—in some cases, it was tens of millions—yet these issues did not come to light because of the regulators. They came to light because of individuals who were so persistent and determined; I am thinking particularly of Paul and Nikki Turner, journalists such as Ian Fraser, and Sally Masterton, who worked for Lloyds. Had it not been for them, the issues would never have come to light. Of course, their efforts have taken a great toll on them and come at great cost to them.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt the flow of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. He has referred to the people who are in jail at the moment. One of my constituents was working for a company called Carringworth. Through its dealings with those people who are in jail now, her company was forced into administration. Now, after 10 years of hell, the administrators are putting huge pressure on her to settle. Is it not wrong that she should be forced to settle before the establishment of an independent set of organisations that can adjudicate and ensure that she gets the justice that she deserves?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Yes. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and he touches on the human cost of these issues as well as the financial cost, which is critical. What we want to see, which I will come on to, is an opening up of all the cases that have been through the Griggs review by means of examination through a completely impartial arbitration process that will fairly adjudicate and arbitrate the claims.

As if the fraud were not bad enough, there was a cover-up. HBOS and Lloyds became aware of the issue from 2006 onwards. The current chief executive, António Horta-Osório, was made aware of the fraud as soon as he took up his post in 2011 by the Turners and many others. Famously, in September 2013, Sally Masterton, a senior risk officer at Lloyds Banking Group, on the instructions of her line manager, produced a report called the Project Lord Turnbull report. Its findings were shocking. There was a corporate strategy within Lloyds and HBOS to conceal the fraud, which caused substantial loss to shareholders and investors.

At that point, there was another opportunity for the bank to hold its hands up and say, “Right, enough is enough. Let’s get all of this out in the open and get to the bottom of these issues.” Did that happen? No, that is not what happened. Sally Masterton was suspended from her job and discredited to the Financial Conduct Authority. Scandalously, she was prevented from working with the police, despite being told that she was vital to the investigation, and then she was fired. The senior management did not make the report available to non-executive directors or the chair of the board for three years. Finally, last month, the bank reversed its position and confirmed that Sally had

“acted with integrity and in good faith at all times”.

There were other elements of cover-up. Thames Valley police said that Lloyds had led them a “merry dance” in their £7-million investigation of these issues. There is evidence of a wider fraud, certainly from victims going through the Griggs review to whom I have spoken. They talk about other senior managers, including Paul Burnett, high risk managing director at HBOS Edinburgh, personally having involvement with HBOS Reading. HBOS compliance officers were embedded in the fraudsters’ operations, and of course gagging orders are used across the board to prevent more disclosures from coming to light.

Let me move on to the review. It was supposed to be an independent review and was headed by Professor Griggs—that is why we call it the Griggs review. It was supposed to provide swift and fair compensation to the victims. However, the SME Alliance, which has done so much work for so many of the victims, instructed Jonathan Laidlaw, QC, who names among his clients the Bank of England, to review the review itself. He determined, in a short report, that the review is “procedurally defective”, and its principles are “flawed and appear partial” to the bank’s interests. That description is consistent with the experiences and stories of the victims. They have described the review to us as corrupt, disgraceful, one-sided and evincing an absence of due diligence, with manipulated documents and lies about evidence. Agreed payments are not met, and the process makes life as difficult and unpleasant as possible. These are victims of fraud.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman add one more element, namely deliberate over-complication? It seems that this whole saga has been made so opaque that it is difficult to get to the bottom of what really happened. Does he agree?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I totally agree with that. I will come on to the disclosure of evidence shortly, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: the bank could have dealt with this summarily many years ago, as soon as it came to light, but it chose not to. Why it chose not to is an open question.

The basic assumption of this review was laid out by Professor Griggs himself, who was quoted as saying that when he deals with these businesses, he is

“invariably dealing with the financial equivalent of a car crash.”

How can that be the basis for any judgment that these businesses were viable? The judge in the case stated that some “were capable of rescue” and that there was

“deliberate mismanagement of these companies”

by the advisers—by the fraudsters. He added that there were “plunderings made from them”, and that

“fees and any useful assets”

were taken from them. Why would the review ignore a High Court judge? Only four of the 76 cases have been dealt with by means of a consequential loss. All the rest have been dealt with through distress and inconvenience—in other words, all those businesses were dud businesses. That is simply not statistically possible.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very forceful speech. This subject is close to many business people’s hearts. Does he agree that because the bank has refused to pay for forensic accounting, victims are left powerless, even if the bank was willing to look at this? As he has just said, the bank simply labelled most of the businesses as failures. It is deliberately making it impossible for the victims to be heard properly with forensic accounting.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is completely one-sided. It means there is a complete imbalance of power in what is supposed to be an independent review, because the bank itself has phalanxes of advisers, whereas the victims clearly cannot afford to provide for the same number or calibre of advisers.

Offers are not made on an open basis; it is a take-it-or-leave-it offer. Imagine, Sir Christopher, that you have been stripped of all your assets over a period of 10 years. You are desperately trying to seek justice, and finally somebody offers you a cheque. Your only other option is to go to the court. What do you do? It is a take-it-or-leave-it offer. If you say, “Actually, I don’t think that is enough,” you get a secondary meeting, but there is no interrogation of the facts; it is simply take it or leave it. That is the nature of the review.

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for calling this debate. In fact, I called a debate on this very subject 10 years ago, when my constituents Justin Riggs and Karl Capp told me how they were being treated by their bank. This is one of the biggest frauds to hit many hard-working small business people in this country. The simple point is that the bank, rather than hiding behind regulations and technicalities, should be giving generous and quick compensation to many people who have lost their businesses, because of a fraud that was covered up and hidden for years by senior members of that bank.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The levels of compensation should be determined by an independent third party, not by the bank itself, because there is no methodology. Nobody can contest the findings of Professor Griggs. There is no way of interrogating how he has arrived at a number. They simply say—I have heard this so many times from Lloyds directors—“Well, we settled most of the claims,” as if that is somehow an endorsement of the process. The fact is that the victims had no other option—no appeal process—other than going to court, which would have cost millions of pounds.

Victims cannot even get access to the evidence. In a normal court process there would be disclosure of evidence, so that they could see the evidence they are being judged against. There was no disclosure of evidence. Lloyds has found a better way, according to a letter it sent me on 20 September. It said it had “created an alternative approach” to disclosure, “to protect customers interests”. That is its approach. It is complete obfuscation.

Eligibility is determined by the bank itself. It decides who is eligible for the review and who is not by invitation only. Only directors get to decide, not shareholders or suppliers, nor Her Majesty’s Treasury, which must have lost a lot of money through this process in respect of tax. It only dealt directly with the individuals who were convicted, not their deputies or other people who may well have been involved in the fraud. This is not an independent review. Professor Griggs is paid by the bank. His remit is determined by the bank. I have seen evidence that determinations he has made have been overruled by the bank.

This is in no way an independent process. Of course, everybody who goes to it is subject to a gagging order. The bank provided us with confirmation that clause 4 in its settlement agreements does not prevent victims talking to it or to the press. However, I have seen another agreement, completely different from the one the bank provided to the Treasury Committee, which contains extra clauses that do prevent these victims speaking to the press or to the authorities. Justice must be seen to be done. Lloyds bank is the judge, jury and executioner. The all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking and finance, of which I am now co-chair, said right from the start that this is the wrong way to deal with the process, but Lloyds pushed on anyway.

Moving on to a solution to these problems, the APPG believes that all cases—anybody who has been subject to the Griggs review—should be re-examined through a completely independent process. The APPG has recommended a financial services tribunal, which would judge cases based on a fair and reasonable test, with one-way cost shifting, so the banks cannot simply keep people out of court by writing huge cheques out to their own lawyer. That would mean that people would get an independent examination of their case. Victims can then get compensation and move on.

We believe that a tribunal is required, with an arbitration process for past claims. There have been four different reviews this year of how we can fill this gap, make this process fairer and get back to a more balanced situation, with restitution and redress. Three of those reviews recommended a financial services tribunal, as we do. The one report that did not was sponsored by the banking industry itself and it simply says that we should increase the powers, remit and jurisdiction of the ombudsman schemes. While that is a good step forward, we do not feel that it is enough.

That addresses compensation, but we need to go further. We need to change the culture in the whole sector, as the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) said. In terms of the Lloyds management, I do not see how the position of the chief executive, António Horta-Osório, is tenable. Given the way that the effective whistleblower has been treated, the way this has been covered up and the way that the process has been deliberately partial, I do not see how the Lloyds management have been consistent with the behaviour required under the senior managers regime. I think António Horta-Osório should resign. I also think he should face investigation under the senior managers regime.

Finally, the Financial Conduct Authority itself—our regulator—has many questions to answer. Why did it approve the scheme? Did it approve the scheme? We have heard conflicting evidence on that. It is a national disgrace that Lloyds has been allowed to operate this sham of a review process. Andrew Bailey himself has questions to answer. Why did he allow the process to continue? Why was he not aware of the patent defects in the process? Nevertheless, the FCA should take charge and undertake an investigation of the senior management under the senior managers regime.

We in this place are defenders of free markets. For me, this is the most important issue that any of us will ever deal with. Certainly, as far as I am concerned, I cannot rest until the matter is settled. My life has been transformed through the opportunities of free markets. In the main, the bankers I have dealt with over 25 years have done a tremendous job—a fair job—to help my business to thrive through some difficulties. I was one of the lucky ones. Not all bankers are the same. Most people in the industry are decent people trying to do the right thing, so it is even more important to hold those who are not to account. We have to make sure that everyone has the opportunities that I have had—that we have had—including all our children and grandchildren. We must all demand, for the sake of the victims, that justice is done and is seen to be done.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the Minister for his comments. I hope the people watching the debate, either in the Gallery or at home, understand that they have many friends in Parliament who want this issue to be dealt with. I know that he does as well. There is such universality of support for dealing with it properly that we will get there in the end, although we are not yet where we need to be.

I appreciate that the Minister is going further than others have gone in the past. Nevertheless, people will be sceptical about the ability of a bank or an independent reviewer, as he called it, to look at the issues and to provide proper redress and a proper method of investigating the complaints. I tried to illustrate in my speech that it was not just about fraud, but about how the corporation itself sought to suppress evidence and a proper investigation of the issues. People are simply not going to accept that anything done voluntarily is fit for purpose.

The Minister is right that I think that a tribunal is the right way forward, rather than simply expanding the ombudsman scheme. For historical cases, it sets a limit of £350,000 as compensation, but every case we deal with is over that figure, so that does not go anywhere near addressing our concerns. It is not the compensation scheme that we need.

I also do not accept that small business lending will suffer if we have more regulation. We simply need a fair and reasonable test for deciding the claims. Ireland introduced regulation for small business lending a few years ago, and its lending has increased significantly since then, so the Minister’s fears are misplaced. We need to ensure that small and medium-sized business interests, which are the most critical interests to our economy, are protected and supported through the process.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the independent review of HBOS Reading.