Dame Clara Furse, former London Stock Exchange chief executive, faced a withering critique on Tuesday as MPs sharply questioned her independence, qualifications and fitness to join the Bank of England's new stability arm.
Members of the Treasury select committee took aim at Dame Clara's prior service on the risk and capital committee of the failed bank Fortis. They also criticised her lack of enthusiasm for tighter leverage caps, rules on overall bank borrowing that Parliament backs in the face of opposition from the Treasury.
Jesse Norman, a prominent Conservative, called her testimony “amazingly unimpressive” and called into question whether he could support her appointment to the Financial Policy Committee, which has responsibility for disarming threats to UK financial stability and growth.
There's just a hint of courage there in the face of the onslaught from the financial establishment to take over the regulatory process.
We could do with somewhat more.
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Yep, the same courage Jesse Norman showed when he was at Tesco. It explains much about Tesco’s success.
The problem is – as I’ve noted before – that select committees have absolutely no authority to demand any action of the government (ie. the executive). Consequently their words and actions can be – and are – routinely ignored by Prime Ministers. The exception is where the issue they are dealing with is suitably “sexy” to attract and maintain media attention. Witness the Culture SC with phone hacking and the PAC with tax avoidance.
But maintaining media interest is the key, as we’ll soon see with the recent report from which the media extracted the snippet about eating less meat that made the headlines yesterday. By next week it’ll be forgotten and the report will go the way of most reports by SCs – gathering dust in the parliamentary library. This will continue until select committees are given at least minimal powers to hold the executive to account.
Your last point is key
If parliament had power it wold help restore faith in democracy
I suspect that Seamus Milne reads your blog, Richard, as he has a good piece in The Guardian that brings together all the various strands of this argument – regularly discussed here for the last few months.
As we and many of your readers would agree, it’s no longer enough to talk about the corporate takeover of HMRC or the NHS, or any single aspect of government and public service. The corporate capture of the state is endemic, just as anyone who knows anything about US government could have predicted would happen when so many UK policy makers take their inspiration for a model of a 21st century state from what happens on the other side of the Atlantic (without, it should be added, noticing the good bits).
It’s now belatedly being recognised that national systems of taxation based on post 2nd WW models of economic activity and the nation state are no longer fit for purpose. We now also have to recognise that systems of representative democracy based on post war assumptions about the nature and role of big business and the 1% in government and public service, and the sources and relations of power they enjoy, also need to be critically examined and a new democractic “settlement” enacted that rebalances the polity to something that is representative of 21st century civil society. A royal commission with extensive powers and a set time limit would be my suggestion (after all, the current threat to democracy is far greater than anything the Levenson inquiry was asked to look into).
One thing we can be clear on, however. As Cameron’s and Clegg’s response to the cash for lobbying scandal of this last week shows, our political elite have absolutely no interest in pursuing such an agenda. And why? Because they are well aware that as we hurtle ever faster towards a neo-fuedal state, controlled and managed – but not paid for – by corporate interests and the rich, they and their kith and kin will be far removed from the serfdom that will (and already is) being forced onto the rest of us. How sad and deeply depressing it is that so few of our politicians and opinion formers recognise this.
Ivan
I know Seamus is a regular reader
And it’s a good article
Richard