The Bradford & Bingley Action Group (BBAG), which represents the interests of around a million ‘dispossessed’ shareholders in Bradford & Bingley, is to make an approach to the Treasury Select Committee in an effort to have a public inquiry into the reasons why the bank was nationalized a decade ago.
David Blundell, BBAG chairman, confirmed to 'Asian Voice' that several members of the Treasury Select have been contacted and a meeting is expected to be held soon to discuss the matter. The move comes in the wake of the tenth anniversary of the run on Northern Rock (September 14, 2007. And, over the past nine years, BBAG has been vigorously campaigned to discover the truth and reasons behind why Bradford & Bingley was nationalized.
According to Blundell the decision to nationalize B&B in September 2008 and “destroy it as an ongoing business” was “made in haste and was inconsistent with the treatment of Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland.” The Treasury sold the B&B savings book and branch network to Santander at a “fire sale price” and the Bank of England provided it with £22 billion of direct support.
Despite B&B shareholders and bond holders having made numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Cabinet Office over many years, the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority (and before it the FSA), little has yielded.
Blundell said these departments have resorted to “subterfuge and obfuscation on an industrial scale”, failing to reply to recorded delivery letters, making public statements, which he asserted “were untrue, destroying records…to avoid telling the truth and made a mockery of the FOIA.”
It is also understood that two MPs in Yorkshire, Alec Shelbrooke and Philip Davies, will ask Nicky Morgan, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, to consider establishing an inquiry into B&B’s nationalization. John Proctor, MEP for Yorkshire and Humberside, has assured Blundell that he will actively pursue the matter both nationally and with the European Union.
