A tale from Lloyds Bank

Just had an executive of Lloyds Bank ring to tell MPs about their latest results. Good idea. He said they're out of the hole. I said bonuses are still too high and that they were lending too much n mortgages and not enough on SMEs. He said SME lending is up whereas for the rest of the banks it's down

That's good news but I had to tell him that when I wrote to Mervyn King the previous governor of the Bank of England to complain that local SMEs couldn't get bank investment he recommended t hem to go to Handelsbank not the British banks!

Can't help thinking we need a people's bank like the Kiwibank Labour set up in New Zealand .This has been a roaring success and increased the competition in the banking sect or we need

By the way our PAC session on HSBC has been postponed until 9 March and I was heavily overruled in my plea that we should call Lord Green who was chief executive  and then Chair in the crucial periods. Being a bit deaf I'm not sure  whether we couldn't call him because he's a Lord, a saint or a Tory or because we thought he wouldn't come  but since the committee, like me, has not four more weeks to live we're going to leave him alone to count his money.