Bring Bank of Scotland back home and end bonus culture, demands Nick Clegg

Published on Friday 5 March 2010 21:49

LIBERAL Democrat leader Nick Clegg has laid out "a vision for fairness" as he launched a scathing attack on Britain's bankers.

• Nick Clegg during his speech yesterday; below, a mug on sale at the conference. Picture: Dan Phillips

He also used his speech to his Scottish party's spring conference to call for the splitting-up of Lloyds Banking Group and the return of an independent Bank of Scotland.

He said one of the key planks of his four-part plan to make the country fairer was reform of the banking sector. He hit out at the "greed of the bankers" and blasted the "failure of Gordon Brown to keep that greed in check".

He told an audience of about 300 in Perth that his party would "change the fundamental assumptions by which both Conservative and Labour governments at Westminster have sought to run the British economy".

Mr Clegg pledged that would mean an "end to the unhealthy fascination, a bewitchment almost, with the City of London".

He went on: "Of course we need a vibrant, competitive financial sector, but never again should the greed of the bankers in the City of London hold a gun to the head of the rest of the British economy."

He said it was "outrageous" that bankers were still paid "eye-watering bonuses", despite some of the banks being bailed out by taxpayers' money. "So I say an end to the banking of excess and greed. Split up the banks. Split up Lloyds. Bring the Bank of Scotland back home," he said.

The Lib Dem leader added that, until that happened, he wanted the banks to face a levy of 10 per cent of their profits to "pay back for the damage they have caused".

He told the conference: "So we sort out the banks, we make them lend on more reasonable terms to the householders, the families, the mortgage holders, the small businesses, the manufacturing industry who are crying for money to keep people in jobs."

Mr Clegg hit out at his political rivals, accusing Prime Minister Gordon Brown of having betrayed people by supporting the war in Iraq. He said the Conservatives had "elevated hypocrisy to an art form" and that SNP First Minister Alex Salmond was a "man who has elevated independence into a one-man fetish".

But he devoted most of his speech to his party's policies, as he vowed the Lib Dems would "never take risks with the credit-worthiness of the United Kingdom".

He told the conference "Labour has turned its back on the values of fairness which it once pretended to champion".

And he said: "It's up to us to set out how we can create that fairer Scotland, that fairer society, that fairer Britain that we all want."

As part of that, he pledged his party would raise the income tax threshold to 10,000.

Mr Clegg told his audience: "If you are rich enough to pay a football team of lawyers and accountants, you can pretty well get away without paying any tax at all, but if you work hard, if you play by the rules, if you scrimp and save to put a warm meal on the table, to pay monthly bills, to pay a mortgage, to take the family on holiday, you pay the taxman through the nose. We will change that."

He said his party's plan to raise the income tax threshold would put 700 back in the pockets of the vast majority of taxpayers.

He also promised a "fair start in life" for children, saying the "sad truth" was that children from deprived backgrounds did not always get the support they needed.

He went on: "That's why our second absolute priority this general election is to deliver extra resources – 2.5 billion every year – to our schools."