If the Barclays story published over the last few days proves anything it is that there is no prospect of effective regulation of banks or the ending of the abuse that some (maybe most of them) cause unless there access to tax havens / secrecy jurisdictions is stopped.

And you can’t stop their access to tax havens unless you stop all access to tax havens.

That does not mean that these places have to go out of business. Far from it. I want them to have sound economies based on what they can really do best — but that is not selling financial abuse.

What I want to close is the secrecy jurisdiction aspect of their activity:

Secrecy jurisdictions are places that intentionally create regulation for the primary benefit and use of those not resident in their geographical domain that is designed to undermine the legislation or regulation of another jurisdiction and that, in addition, create a deliberate, legally backed veil of secrecy that ensures that those from outside the jurisdiction making use of its regulation cannot be identified to be doing so.

Let’s be clear — what this demands is legislative change. These ‘spaces’ are created by law. They can be abolished by law. This, I think, is what Gordon Brown meant when he said he wanted to ‘outlaw’ these places. In his context this is possible.

And what is clear is that what the G20 seems to be discussing so far will not achieve this objective. The Guardian has realised this. It says today:

[The] leaders of the 20 most important economies gather in London in just under a fortnight for what promises to be a fractious meeting. But there is one point on which Europe and America agree: the damage done by the abuse of tax havens. Indeed, Jersey, Switzerland and others are so worried at the prospect of action that they have spent the past week signing deals which offer some transparency. This is not good enough. The much hallowed bilateral information-sharing deals require tax officials to request specific financial details and show why they want them. They take immense time and effort. The G20 summit must strike an international deal that stipulates full and automatic information-sharing between tax jurisdictions. Anything less will be a failure.

That’s heavy. But I’d absolutely agree that anything less will not achieve the stated objectives.

And that is a problem for us all.