Financial Services

Stephen Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. One recommendation of the Wheatley review was that the setting of LIBOR benchmarks should include objectivity. That will require a reduction in the number of benchmarks because some do not have the volume of transactions to establish that, but the new regulated conduct of LIBOR setting will include a requirement to route the reporting of rates through transactions that are visible to the Financial Services Authority. The opportunity to parlay the commercial interest of particular banks into what is supposed to be an objective rate will therefore no longer be there.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

My right hon. Friend has delivered his statement in his usual calm and moderate way, but his constituents in Tonbridge and mine in Bristol West will be absolutely disgusted and furious when they discover that a lot of these abuses took place after the £45.5 billion taxpayer-funded bail-out of the Royal Bank of Scotland that saved those jobs. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards is clearly still working, but surely one outcome of such abuses should be that any individual involved is struck off—whatever criminal and civil sanctions could be taken against them—and never allowed to work anywhere else in British financial services. If they were a doctor, lawyer or accountant, that is precisely what should happen. That is the real culture change that we need in banking.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is right. The constituents of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) might be concerned if I sought to represent them, but my constituents in Tunbridge Wells do, I think, share the fury that has been described. For a bank that has caused the taxpayer to bail it out to such an extent to then engage in practices that could—had we not taken action to require clawback—have resulted in further cost to the taxpayer, is outrageous. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) that the individuals implicated in such practices should leave the financial services and find a better living, rather than working in an industry in which trust and confidence is required.