Alistair Darling announced Labour's plans for a new council to oversee the ativities of the Treasury, the FSA and the Bank of England. But he has kept the current system of regulation.
In the House of Commons, Darling said that financial institutions needed to be better managed. But he and Brown were the the people responsible for managing the financial services to prevent anything like the Credit Crunch from happening!!!!
Why was this announced when Brown was out of the country at the G8 meeting? He was actually the man in charge throughout the, first as chancellor and then as PM. Surely he should have been the person to announce the government's plans to control the financial institutions? Or doesn't he like owning up to getting things wrong!
Darling added, "We need a change of culture in the banks and their boardrooms, with pay practices that are focused on long-term stability, and not on short-term profit". Does he mean that in the last 10 years there has been no long-term stability and that the focus was on short-term profit?
Shadow chancellor George Osborne said the Conservatives would abolish the current system and give supervision powers to the Bank of England.
I liked the response of the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable. He said 'This is not so much a White Paper as a blank paper'.
Keywords: banking, banking failure, banks, credit crunch, failure, financial, gordon brown, labour