{"id":23153,"date":"2013-11-20T15:36:50","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T15:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=23153"},"modified":"2013-11-20T15:36:50","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T15:36:50","slug":"if-theres-a-need-for-an-investigation-into-a-banks-chair-then-look-at-hsbc-not-the-coop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/11\/20\/if-theres-a-need-for-an-investigation-into-a-banks-chair-then-look-at-hsbc-not-the-coop\/","title":{"rendered":"If there’s a need for an investigation into a bank’s chair then look at HSBC, not the Coop"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian has reported:<\/a><\/p>\n

David Cameron\u00a0has raised the prospect of an inquiry into the Co-op Bank over its financial struggles and\u00a0embarrassing revelations about its former chairman the Rev Paul Flowers.<\/p>\n

The prime minister described Flowers as the \"man who has broken a bank\" following questions about his financial competence, drug-taking and resignation as a Bradford councillor over adult material on his computer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find this quite extraordinary. Paul Flowers has clearly failed in his job, in the expectation of him as a Methodist minister and as a councillor. All are a personal tragedy and it is clear an inappropriate person appears to have been appointed the chair of a bank - which is also a failure by the FSA.<\/p>\n

But does this require an enquiry? I doubt it, very much. This has a great deal of similarity to the seemingly related demand for an investigation into union campaigning<\/a> - which once more seems to be a massive exercise in misuse of government funding for party political purposes.<\/p>\n

There are enquiries we do need. For example, how is it that HSBC still has a banking licence despite paying almost $2 billion in fines for money laundering<\/a>? And perhaps even more importantly, how did David Cameron appoint the chair and former chief executive of that bank who was in office when those offences took place to be a member of the House of Lords and a trade minister in his government<\/a>?<\/p>\n

There should also be an enquiry into bank mis-selling. Where's that?<\/p>\n

These seem to be issues requiring investigation. Paul Flowers and Unite's campaigning are not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guardian has reported: David Cameron\u00a0has raised the prospect of an inquiry into the Co-op Bank over its financial struggles and\u00a0embarrassing revelations about its former
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banking","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}