Tweet
Once more 'after the horse has bolted'
Gordon Brown tonight admitted he should have regulated the British banks more than he did, and said he did not do so due to lobbying by the City.
Brown has previously blamed the scale of the recession mainly, if not exclusively, on the international banking crisis, and the refusal of other countries to agree to tighter international surveillance of the banks.
Speaking on ITV Tonight Brown admitted he had succumbed to lobbying: "In the 1990s, the banks they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation.' And everybody in the City was saying ... and all the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much.' And actually the truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more. So I've learnt from that."
Brown said that he had been under pressure from the Conservatives to make it even lighter. He added: "You don't listen to the industry when they say, 'This is good for us.' You've got to talk about the whole public interest.
"And so we are tougher on the banks and tougher on the way they behave and we can be relied on to make sure the banks act in the national interest."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...tor-regulation
Brown has previously blamed the scale of the recession mainly, if not exclusively, on the international banking crisis, and the refusal of other countries to agree to tighter international surveillance of the banks.
Speaking on ITV Tonight Brown admitted he had succumbed to lobbying: "In the 1990s, the banks they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation.' And everybody in the City was saying ... and all the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much.' And actually the truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more. So I've learnt from that."
Brown said that he had been under pressure from the Conservatives to make it even lighter. He added: "You don't listen to the industry when they say, 'This is good for us.' You've got to talk about the whole public interest.
"And so we are tougher on the banks and tougher on the way they behave and we can be relied on to make sure the banks act in the national interest."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...tor-regulation
Comment