Frank's Westminster Blog

The FSA Chairman is always worth listening to. Lord Turner has a proven track record. But what are we to make of his speech last night? Banking capital ratio rules should be used as a counter-cyclical device. This is a welcome, but pretty late announcement. When the Government first started pumping huge sums of tax-payers’ money in to our banking system, to increase its capital base and free up the flow of credit to businesses, the FSA tightened its expectations on the banks’...

I hope members of the cabinet’s economic war council were hard at work long before I dictated this blog. The second round of bank rescue measures announced on Monday were pretty thin gruel. True, tax-payers’ potential liabilities were massively escalated, but the Government could not explain much of the details of how the scheme will work in freeing up credit. Even without the details it was pretty clear the wrong decision had again been taken. Insuring against toxic bonds is a...

Nearly full marks for Alan Johnson for publishing The NHS Constitution . As this is hopefully the beginning of the debate rather than its end, here are three ideas. What should be the role of constitutions, or as I argue contracts in our lives. First, we need similar constitutions/ contracts across most of our public life now as a way of allowing decent citizens to know what is expected of all of us. I’ve tried to pilot this idea in schools where the pupils themselves where the pupils...

At some stage the Government, I believe, will have to come back to the bad band idea. While the toxic assets have been repackaged to the nth degree the banks by now must have some idea of the extent of their vulnerability on this score. So I return to an idea I put forward in a Telegraph article dated 13th December. Before another penny of tax-payers’ money is given over to the banking system, the Prime Minister and Chancellor ought to lock Britain’s senior bankers in a room saying...

There are a number of firsts with this morning’s post. It arrived early. It also bought a card announcing what will be in some weeks’ time a couple’s second child. The card is a reproduction of the mother’s last scan showing a very healthy child in her womb. The scans, which have been instigated to alert parents to handicapped children, thereby opening the door for an abortion, might, in the longer run, paradoxically have a totally different effect on the...