THE National’s main business headline yesterday (Tribunals no use for banking disputes, says review, October 24) was a wee bit misleading. A better take would be: “Spurious report funded by big banks tries desperately to fend off new tribunal system of redress for small businesses forcibly driven into bankruptcy so their assets could be looted”.
After the great bank crash of 2008, the big UK banks deliberately bankrupted tens of thousands of small-business customers in order to seize their assets at a knockdown price and resell them. As much as £100 billion of SME assets were looted and pillaged in this manner – the biggest bank heist in history. Even more outrageous, the two banks most closely involved with this scam – RBS and HBOS-Lloyds – were publicly owned at the time.
While an MP, I chaired the Commons All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Business Banking, which led the campaign to get justice for the victims and to institute a new system of tribunals that would give small-business customers a legal framework to pursue claims against the big banks. So it comes as no surprise that the banks (through their trade body, UK Finance) have produced a report to try and shoot-down this much-needed reform.
Currently, lending to small firms is not regulated (unlike your mortgage), which explains why the banks are able to scam SMEs at will. Few small firms have the financial resources to take a bank to court. Worse, in Scotland, the banks have deliberately signed up most legal practices as potential advisers, thus effectively denying SMEs any chance of even finding a solicitor to represent them. This sharp practice should be outlawed by the Scottish Government.
A tribunal system – allowing SME clients the right of redress against a bank – can be introduced under present law and without fresh primary legislation. Crucially, a tribunal system could force banks to disgorge information and take action when they forge loan documents (as they have).
One serious weakness of Andrew Wilson’s Sustainable Growth Report for the SNP is that it proposes an independent Scotland should simply import the present UK financial regulation system wholesale. SNP MPs fought tooth and nail against this regulatory system, which is rigged in favour of the big banks. The SNP should announce now that, post-independence, it will bring SME lending into the regulatory framework and introduce a tribunal system of redress for small-business customers. Indy Scotland should also separate retail from investment banking – and bring retail and SME lending under public and community ownership.
George Kerevan
Executive member, SNP Socialists
READ MORE: Tribunals no use for banking disputes, independent review finds
I WAS left totally astounded at Michael Fry’s attempt to justify the hatred of the Common Fishing Policy felt by the five families who own most of Scotland’s EU white fish quota, with little or no regard to why the Scottish deep sea fleet has ended up where it is (Storm brewing, October 23).
To blame the EU for repeated sell-outs of the industry by the very party of government the “five” support is disingenuous in the extreme.
It was Ted Heath who first sold out the UK white fish sector in the initial negotiations, to get backing for a number of other preferential deals. At that point the significance was not apparent, as the UK white fish fleets were happily rampaging through Icelandic and Norwegian fish stocks. The impact only became apparent after the Cod War which saw UK vessels excluded from Icelandic waters the mid 1970s, the collapse of a number of small concerns as well as big names in the industry, and the decimation of Grimsby’s once-massive fleet.
Thatcher’s first sop to the white fish industry was to remove the three-mile inshore boat limit, which resulted in the decline of many of the UK’s inshore fleets as their deep-sea trawler cousins scoured the sea bed destroying the very habitats developing UK fish stocks require. In the 1960s the coast off Port Patrick abounded with herring, mackerel and cod. By the late 1980s the once-rich inshore grounds around the Mull of Galloway were a wasteland. Next she did a deal to sell off the UK’s sand eel quota to Denmark for backing one of her EU ploys. One impact of this was the decline of seabird populations around the UK coasts, especially puffins, before global warming and sea water temperature rises in UK waters became a real issue.
By 2010 Labour defence cuts had seen the ending of the Royal Navy fishery protection squadron followed rapidly by the Tories cutting the RAF’s marine reconnaissance capability to zero – two elements required to police any future post-Brexit 200-mile exclusion zone.
Just a light scratching of the surface – don’t get me started on the potential impact of Brexit on the remaining inshore fleet.
I ask Mr Fry this: why should Scotland’s inshore fleet be held to ransom by these five families over problems caused by the very party of government they support?
Peter Thomson
Kirkcudbright
READ MORE: Storm's brewing: Why our 'expendable' fishermen shouldn't get their hopes up
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