Parliament calls in 2 major banks for questioning

The House of Lords will question the Chairman of HSBC, Executive Director of Lloyds and Sir John Vickers on banking standards today.

Former Chairman of the Independent Commission on Banking, Sir John Vickers, will give evidence to the House of Lords followed by Jonathan Symonds and George Culmer of HSBC and Lloyds.

The evidence will be heard at 3.35pm this afternoon when the committee will quiz Sir John Vickers on whether the ring-fencing of retail banks is still necessary.

This comes after recent criticism of the proposals which has alleged that subsequent reforms to bank regulation, such as more stringent capital and liquidity requirements,  has made the ring-fence redundant before it has even been implemented.

Sir John will be providing evidence on the following areas:

•    Is ring-fencing still necessary? Given other reforms, will it make banks any safer or merely increase complexity?
•    Do you share the optimism of the Governor of the Bank of England that banks in future will be resolved “without recourse to the taxpayer?”
•    Given you argued against the full separation of banks, would you be concerned if HSBC decides to spin-off its UK retail bank?
•    Will the costs of ring-fencing, which the Treasury estimate to be more than £4 billion a year, end up being borne by customers?
•    Is there merit in limiting the size of banks?

Then at 4.30pm, evidence will be heard from Jonathan Symonds and George Culmer and in this session the committee will ask:

•    Are you in favour of the ring-fence?
•    How much do you expect the implementation of the ring-fence to cost?
•    To what extent will ring-fencing disadvantage you relative to foreign competitors?
•    Has subsequent regulatory reform rendered the ring-fence redundant?
•    If HSBC decides to spin-off its UK retail bank, is that a sign of the effectiveness of the ring-fence? Do you agree with the Chancellor that a recovery in banks’ profitability means they can make a bigger contribution to the repair of the UK’s public finances?

You can tune in to watch the sessions live at www.parliamentlive.tv