Letter to The Times: banks, barrow boys and offending behaviour

12.00.00pm GMT Sat 23rd Jan 2010

It might have been politic for the boss of HSBC, Mike Geoghegan, to combine his lecture on slashing spending and leaving bonuses untaxed (report, Jan 21) with an awareness of popular anger, a certain humility and advice to bankers to abjure tax loopholes and havens, as well as gross bonuses.

As it is, Geoghegan's homily jars with the evidence of bankers continuing to live high on the hog while taking for granted the safety net from the very taxes he deplores. And even a "small" City bonus would be enough to restore the £100,000 annual budget cut that you report (Student Law, Jan 21) for the Criminal Cases Review Commission, undermining its work in reviewing miscarriages of justice and freeing innocent people from jail.

The kind of capitalism we are suffering today - exemplified by the Kraft takeover of Cadbury, which is motivated by financial windfalls for a fortunate few rather than industrial efficiency - is not a fair, liberal, open and competitive model but one that is rigged in a manner reminiscent of medieval guilds. Bankers' and hedge fund managers' greed could provoke a backlash with troubling political, as well as economic consequences that no liberal could desire.

Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP

(This letter was published in The Times on 23 January 2010.)