Small firms rip-off was ‘systemic’, says MP
RBS chiefs “misled” MPs over their treatment of small and medium-sized businesses, a shadow Treasury minister claimed yesterday.
Labour’s Clive Lewis said he had been given an unedited copy of the Financial Conduct Authority’s investigation into RBS – showing the bank’s mistreatment of SME customers was “systemic and widespread”.
It contradicts the claims of the executives to MPs that it amounted to “isolated incidents of poor governance”.
Lewis told the Commons: “Having read the document, I believe it shows that RBS executives misled the select committee in their evidence and have a stated policy of misleading members of this House.”
He continued: “In one shocking passage of the report out of hundreds, the bank boasted one family business were set to ‘lose their shirts’ so RBS could get a ‘chunky equity deal’.
“It is clear the summary of the report the FCA has published is what I would politely describe as a sanitised version.”
Lewis asked for permission to hand the unedited report to Treasury select committee chairwoman Nicky Morgan and Commons Speaker John Bercow.
Bercow said: “It is not for me either to give or to deny (Lewis) permission to hand over the report to the chair of the select committee. He must, and I am sure will, take responsibility for his own actions.”