The Bradford & Bingley Action Group (BBAG), which represents around one million dispossessed shareholders of Bradford & Bingley plc, has appealed to the Parliamentary Ombudsman over what it describes as “administrative failures” by the Cabinet Office, HM Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – formerly the Financial Services Authority - over the nationalisation of the now defunct UK bank in 2008.
David Blundell, BBAG’s chairman, after having had discussions with the Ombudsman’s office, sent formal complaints to the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. They include questioning a statement received from the Cabinet Office in 2008 (“We have no files whatsoever”) in a response to a Freedom of Information (‘FOI’) request on the bank’s nationalisation.
The action group doubted this statement at the time and Blundell says their “suspicions would appear to have been proved correct” as following further FOI requests the Cabinet Office finally admitted in 2011 that it did have files.
BBAG has now written to Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, making a formal complaint on the untrue statement made in 2008. According to Blundell this “destroyed any momentum the BBAG campaign may have achieved in the months prior to the General Election in 2010, particularly in respect of a judicial review.”
Based on the Ombudsman’s advice, BBAG has also made a formal complaint to Sir Nicholas Macpherson, Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, in regard to BBAG’s FOI request for details of all communications between BBC journalist Robert Peston and John Kingman, the Second Permanent Secretary at the Treasury at the time of the nationalisation. Blundell maintains that it was certain “well-informed reporting” that was a significant factor in causing a run on B&B shares.
The Treasury response has been that they had “no such records” - including ‘On the Record’ briefings by policy officials with journalists. And, when Kingman left the Treasury in December 2008 “information on his laptop, smart phone and other network resources was cleared.” Blundell asks why on a matter like this of national importance such communications were not recorded - digitally or otherwise. BBAG will be holding a public meeting in London later this year to provide a further update. For more information on BBAG see: www.bbaction.com
by Roger Aitken