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Archbishop of Canterbury warns of 'lynch mob' against bankers
The naming and shaming of individual bankers following the financial crisis has been described as “lynch mobbish” by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Most Rev Justin Welby said that he was “very edgy indeed” about naming individuals perceived as being responsible for failings at financial institutions.
However, the Archbishop, who was a member of the Banking Standards Commission, said that senior executives in banks “made sure they weren’t told things” so that they could “plead ignorance”.
The Archbishop, a former oil executive, also said he had sympathy for former bankers who had given evidence to the commission and added: “I’m not sure I would have been very different.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 4 series The Bishop and the Bankers the Archbishop said: “Certainly one of the trends that has been very unfortunate, to put it mildly, is that in some financial services companies there was a clear policy of not telling the top people - they made sure they weren't told things - because then they could plead ignorance, and that's just unacceptable.”
He added: “But this business of somehow saying that one individual bears the whole blame as opposed to simply the accountability - it feels lynch mobbish.”
The comments on bankers were the Archbishop’s first since the commission published its report on banking standards last month.
The report recommended that senior bankers should face jail and the loss of millions of pounds in bonuses if they are involved in a future banking collapse
However, the Government’s decision to ignore many of the measures to clamp down on banks engaging in risky trading has been described as “inexplicable” by Andrew Tyrie MP, the chairman of the cross-party commission that recommended the reforms.
Mr Tyrie, who is also the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, said the decision to ignore the Commission on Banking Standards’s proposal on proprietary trading was “very regrettable”. He said it was “very disappointing” that the Government would not be giving regulators powers to call for the separation of retail and investment banks.
Lord Lawson, a former Chancellor and member of the commission, said the Government’s banking reform bill was “defective in many areas”.
“Why the Government has rejected these proposals – electrification and proprietary trading – is inexplicable,” said Mr Tyrie. “Nothing substantive has been forthcoming to justify the rejection.”
The Commission on Banking Standards was set up last year by George Osborne after the Chancellor came under pressure to make an inquiry into the industry after the Libor-rigging scandal.