Salute the champions of justice
FIGHTING for justice from large companies can be a long and lonely road. Those who attempt it are likely to be patronised, fobbed off and branded as nuisances or nutters as big organisations use every trick in the book to make them go away.
So as the City suits and corporate chief executives jet off to sun themselves at Sandy Lane or swish down the slopes at Gstaad, I want to raise a glass to the campaigners – the people who have this year shown the guts and determination to take on powerful vested interests.
These are in the main ordinary men and women who have devoted huge amounts of their time and energy in return for little recognition – and an awful lot of flak.
People like Paul and Nikki Turner, whose business was ruined by corrupt bankers at HBOS Reading but who finally this winter won a settlement. As we report on Page 68, they will enjoy their first Christmas in a decade without the long shadow of the bank hanging over them.
Anyone would forgive them for stepping back and enjoying the fruits of victory, but they now plan to continue fighting for other entrepreneurs.
The TV star Noel Edmonds is another victim of an HBOS Reading banker, and whatever one thinks of his showbiz persona, he has been brave enough to talk with unsparing honesty to this newspaper about how it drove him to the brink of suicide.
Noel doesn’t see himself as a campaigner, but he has been courageous in using his fame to draw attention to a problem the banks are all too keen to dismiss. The Turners and hundreds of other entrepreneurs simply refused to give in when they were mistreated by their bank.
This newspaper is fighting on their behalf but it will be thanks to them when the banks are finally forced to account for their betrayal of small firms, as I believe they will be.
Banking is not the only battleground – thousands have found their pensions at risk yet again this year.
Frank Field, the veteran Labour MP, has campaigned tirelessly on this front as has Baroness Ros Altmann in the Lords.
These two are always in the line of defence when the likes of Sir Philip Green and the bosses of Toys R Us need to be reminded of their obligations to pensioners, or when rogue retirement advisers try to rip off steelworkers. They deserve our gratitude. As for the bosses of the big housebuilding firms, they too have discovered they cannot exploit ordinary people with impunity. Thanks to campaigners including Katie Kendrick – a nurse from Ellesmere Port who bought a leasehold home from Bellway only to find herself facing a huge bill to buy the freehold – the Government has this week promised to free homebuyers from such ‘feudal’ property practices. Katie’s life, working 13-hour shifts caring for sick children, is far removed from the multi-millionaire housing bosses she has taken on. None more so than Jeff Fairburn and his senior colleagues at Persimmon – one of the companies involved in the leasehold scandal – who are sharing an £800 million bonus pot between them.
The company insists it cannot scale back those incentives because more than a hundred managers are in line for rewards under the scheme and it is contractually obliged to pay up.
That, however, doesn’t stop Mr Fairburn – already a very rich man – from forgoing his own obscene rewards.
He is by all accounts a decent sort who gives plenty to good causes, so he should do the decent thing and publicly set the right example by giving up the £130 million coming his way.
What a wonderful Christmas present that could be for a homeless charity.