Bank chiefs should be disqualified – Nick Clegg

Today’s the start of the party’s spring conference, and to mark it Nick Clegg has given an interview to The Times in which he makes this eye-catching proposal:

Directors who were running the banks Northern Rock, HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland and Bradford & Bingley when they were rescued by the taxpayer should be disqualified from sitting on company boards, Nick Clegg said yesterday.

On the eve of the Liberal Democrats’ conference in Harrogate, Mr Clegg told The Times that these directors had shown that they were not fit to oversee companies.

His proposal would affect leading City figures such as Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, the former chairman of HBOS, and Peter Sutherland, a non-executive director of RBS and chairman of BP.

Much of the power to do this already exists. The Financial Services Authority can remove licences to operate in financial services, and Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, can disqualify company directors.

“I don’t say this out of any sense of being vindictive or wanting to put them in the stocks,” Mr Clegg said. “It is a sensible thing for the regulator or Lord Mandelson to say, ‘You guys have shown you are not fit’.”

Update: even James Forsyth of the right-wing Spectator’s Coffee House blog has praised Nick for his statement:

This strikes me as very clever politics. There is a phenomenal amount of anger, much of it justified, at the fallen masters of the universe who seem to have paid no price for their actions. Politicians of all parties have been trying to tap into this but few of their ideas have cut through. Clegg’s proposal is eye-catching enough to do so. It is also that rare combination, just and populist.