Charlotte Hogg resigns as BoE deputy governor

The Bank of England's newly-appointed deputy governor has resigned after coming under fire for breaking the Bank's code of conduct by failing to declare that her brother worked for Barclays.

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Charlotte Hogg failed to declare that her brother worked for Barclays. Picture: PACharlotte Hogg failed to declare that her brother worked for Barclays. Picture: PA
Charlotte Hogg failed to declare that her brother worked for Barclays. Picture: PA

Charlotte Hogg offered a voluntary resignation last week, before insisting in a letter to Bank governor Mark Carney yesterday that she must step down from her post.

Her resignation letter was made public today, just moments after the House of Treasury select committee published a damning report stating that her “professional competence falls short” of the standards required to fulfil her role as deputy governor of the Bank.

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Writing to Carney and Anthony Habgood, chairman of the Bank’s Court, Hogg said: “Last week I offered you my resignation in recognition of the fact that I made a mistake in not declaring my brother’s work on the forms that the Bank requires. It has become clear to me that I should now insist.

“As I have said, I am very sorry for that mistake. It was an honest mistake: I have made no secret of my brother’s job – indeed it was I who informed the Treasury select committee of it, before my hearing.”

She added: “But I fully accept it was a mistake, made worse by the fact that my involvement in drafting the policy made it incumbent on me to get all my own declarations absolutely right.

“I also, in the course of a long hearing, unintentionally misled the committee as to whether I had filed my brother’s job on the correct forms at the Bank. I would like to repeat my apologies for that, and to make clear that the responsibility for all those errors is mine alone.”

Her resignation comes after the influential Treasury committee, headed by Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, stopped short of recommending she be axed from her role.

But it said Hogg failed “over a period of nearly four years to comply with the code of conduct, despite numerous procedural reminders and opportunities to do so”.

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The statement comes weeks after Hogg apologised to the committee for not formally disclosing that her brother, Quintin, was Barclays’ group strategy director, which could conflict with her work on the prudential regulation committee (PRC). She had not declared the family link on a number of occasions since joining the Bank as chief operating officer in 2013.

It comes after Hogg, who has been touted as a possible successor to Carney, told the Treasury committee at a hearing that she always declared areas of conflicts of interests and was compliant with all of the Bank’s codes of conduct because she helped to write them.

It prompted committee member John Mann to demand she steps down, saying that Hogg “has either lied to Parliament or she is grossly incompetent”.