Schedule 7 of the Immigration Act 2016
Britain is a nation with a dubious imperial past and a rather selective memory; one that has forced open the doors of countries the world over while continuing to close its own, bringing us to the...
View ArticleIndirect and Direct Messages…
It was only as I went out of the door of a local building society that I began to realise that I might have been given at least one powerful message through changes that had been made there! The...
View ArticleOpinion: Don’t complain – walk out!
The story of UK banks is the one that just keeps on giving. While we may be shocked by the LIBOR scandal (even though – let’s face it – we don’t really understand whether we have lost out or benefitted...
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William Powell AM writes… Why we must protect rural banking
Almost every week brings news of the closure of bank branches in rural areas. As an Assembly Member in Wales representing a large rural region, I know at first hand the real effects of bank closures on...
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Opinion: Government must act to stop Basel reforms
Most of my working day is spent scuttling between sombre conferences on Central Banking best practice and meeting city economists to get their instant reaction to economic developments. So when an...
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Cyprus bailout plan: good idea, badly implemented?
Cyprus’s parliament couldn’t have been much clearer in its rejection of the plan, negotiated between eurozone members, to bail out the country’s failing banks. As a result, Cyprus is now turning from...
View ArticleThe Independent View: How the Payments Council is delivering a payments...
Since the beginning of the financial crisis there has been real appetite for reform into how our financial sector works and how we want it to operate. The Liberal Democrats have played an important...
View ArticleOpinion: Can the bank bailout boost credit unions?
LloydsTSB is now sufficiently strong that the current share price exceeds the price paid by the Government at the time of the bail-out. These shares can now be sold off and the money returned to the...
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The Independent View: Will competition and choice open up the banking sector...
In light of the launch of this week’s Current Account Switching Scheme, the Liberal Democrat conference was well timed to ask at a fringe meeting: “Will competition and choice open up the banking...
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Opinion: The Case for Community Banking
There are signs that the banking crisis may be coming to an end. The old TSB has re-emerged, Lloyds may be returned wholly to the private sector. William & Glyn’s may also re-emerge with...
View ArticleOpinion: This could be the historic moment the banks shift
Tuesday will see one of those moments which may prove a turning point in the development of an effective UK banking system. That is the day that the banks will reveal the geographical spread of their...
View ArticleOpinion: Why local banks need Lib Dems to act
It hardly seems worth Ed Miliband’s time to actually make the speech on economics today, because it has been previewed, leaked and debated – almost sentence by sentence – all week. There was a debate...
View ArticleOpinion: Shocking complacency in UK banking reform
In British politics there is one area of policy where popular sentiment and dire need strongly coincide. Banking reform. Opinion surveys seem to suggest that it is Chancellor Osborne’s ‘Achilles Heel’....
View ArticleVince on Scottish independence: RBS would ‘inevitably’ move to London
It’s not often we hear from the Lib Dem business secretary Vince Cable on constitutional matters. But today he appeared before Parliament’s Business, Innovation and Skills Committee to discuss the...
View ArticleOpinion: Underpinning local enterprise through the banking system
Despite a last minute attempt to scrap criticisms of the big banks, the Lib Dems are now committed to a powerful programme to create a diverse local lending infrastructure in the UK. And most important...
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Opinion: There is a reason banks aren’t lending enough to small businesses –...
Since the banks were ‘bailed out’ with taxpayers money, a regular refrain from across the political divide has been that the banks are doing decisive harm to the country by refusing to lend to small...
View ArticleOpinion: Liberal Democrats should debate ways of liberating our economy from...
“Stronger Economy Fairer Society” was the strap-line that took us into the devastating General Election of 2015. Some members wanted a fairer society that would support a stronger economy but...
View ArticleFarron blasts shelving of enquiry into banking culture
We already know that the Government tried to slip out lots of bad news (including crucial evidence of the hardship caused by the Bedroom Tax) in a giant Take out the Trash day before Christmas, but the...
View ArticleToo unpopular to fail?
Embed from Getty Images In 2008, financial services firm Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. With over $600 billion in assets, Lehman Brothers remains the largest...
View ArticleMaking banking a genuinely free market
Embed from Getty Images You wish to buy a house, but can’t afford one – a predicament many face. You approach the bank for a loan, repayable over 25 years. You’d think that the money the bank has...
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