LONDON: Britain's finance minister George Osborne on Wednesday urged lawmakers to support plans for costly structural reform of the country's banks to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne's plea came as he appeared to back the creation of a professional standards body to oversee behaviour by British lenders including Barclays, HSBC and state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland.
"I would be very wary of unpicking a consensus that has been arrived at" over reform of Britain's banks, Osborne told the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
The Commission is a scrutiny panel composed of lawmakers from parliament's upper and lower houses, as well as Bishop of Durham Justin Welby who has been named as the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
"We have spent two years getting to this point. We are on the verge of introducing ground-breaking legislation. I don't think this is the point at which we want to say, let's go back to square one," the Chancellor said.
Set up by Osborne, the Commission is looking into banking standards and culture in the wake of the Libor rate-rigging scandal that has rocked Barclays.
The Chancellor is now concerned that the Commission could seek fresh wholesale recommendations for reform of the nation's banking sector.
Conservative lawmaker and Commission chair Andrew Tyrie told Osborne however that members did not find it "very convincing to be told that we should be wary of unpicking a consensus.
"Just because something has achieved a consensus does not necessarily mean that it is right. It is our job to take a look at it," Tyrie said.
Comments
Comments are closed.