Banking Reform

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the real tragedies, and one of the things that makes me most angry about the declining reputation of banking in recent years, is that the reputations of many hundreds of thousands of people who work in banks up and down the country and who have chosen banking as a career because of its associations with probity and respect in the community have been besmirched by the actions of a very small number of people. Our purpose in restoring the reputation of financial services in this country is also to allow those people to go to the pub without being teased and ribbed because they work in a bank, which is something that should never have happened to them.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

My constituents want banks to serve industry and our community, not themselves. May I try the Minister yet again on the question of full reserve powers? Why should the evidence of one institution hold sway over that expert commission?

[Greg Clark]

It is the hon. Lady’s objective that banks should serve businesses and their customers, and that is precisely what Sir John Vickers has in mind. That is the purpose of the exercise, and it is exactly what I want to achieve. Any ring-fenced bank that strays from that purpose and neglects its core customers—its retail depositors and the other people who bank with it—by taking their money and playing with it in the casino will be broken up.