How to restore trust to the City of shame

JUST when it seemed Britain’s banks could sink no l ower i n the public’s estimation, it emerges that the biggest names on the High Street have been abusing customers’ trust, using tactics that would shame a back-street conman.

In these immoral times, it is sadly unsurprising a sleazy loan shark such as Wonga has been caught sending bullying letters to its debtors, headed with the names of fictitious solicitors’ firms.

But even given all we’ve learned about bankers, it is still profoundly shocking that once-trusted firms such as Lloyds, Barclays, Halifax, RBS and HSBC have stooped to similar deceit. Perhaps shabbier sti l l are t heir mendacious efforts to justify such trickery, claiming their threatening letters make clear they are sent from their own offices. No, they don’t. Most have been mocked up to look as if they come from solicitors or small-time debt collectors, rather than multi-billion-pound corporations. Their clear intent is to mislead and frighten. The smart-alec spivs at HBoS even indulged in a private joke, calling their debt collection firm Blair, Oliver & Scott, with the initials of the Bank of Scotland.

Those who received these letters, in the depths of their money troubles, will have found them less amusing.

As for the claim by Barclays that it dropped the practice ‘earlier this year’, doesn’t this lose its moral shine when we learn the change came into force only this week, after Wonga’s public shaming?

One thing is inexplicable. Any private citizen or small business owner who resorted to such calculated deceit and intimidation would be up before the magistrates in short order. Yet not one banker has had to answer to a court, while Wonga’s only penalty has been an instruction to pay compensation to 45,000 customers it bullied by deceit. But then, what’s new? Nor has any senior City figure been prosecuted in Britain over the scandal of PPI ‘misselling’ (a polite word for systemic, multi-billion pound fraud). Nor for money laundering, funding terror, rigging interest rates, overcharging for loans or fiddling prices of gold, shares and foreign currency.

The truth is that the financial sector, on which this country is disproportionately dependent, stands or falls on the question of trust. This is underlined by the very vocabulary of the City – assurance, credit, promissory note, trust fund, goodwill, warranty, guarantee.

Today, trust in the sector stands at its lowest ebb. We cannot restore it until the guilty are brought to book – and a full public inquiry is ordered into the conduct and ethics of an industry in disgrace.