Conference emergency motion: tougher action on banks and bonuses

Sunday morning’s emergency motion debate at the Liberal Democrat conference in Sheffield was on banking, moved by sometime Lib Dem Voice contributor Prateek Buch. The motion called for “banks supported by the taxpayer to be broken up into smaller, safer entities” alongside criticising banker remuneration and the Merlin project which is called “weak” and “insufficient”. Investment and retail banking should also be separated according to the motion.

The motion also called for Liberal Democrats to “ensure that the recommendations of the Vickers Commission are carried out in full”. As the commission has yet to report, that is a rather risky proposition – but with the general mood about major banking reform promising to back something whose details we don’t yet know didn’t seem to concern most people.

(As it happens, I think the Commission’s recommendations are likely to be ones the party will want to support and to see enacted promptly, but outsourcing policy making in such a way on other topics would probably have been very controversial.)

The motion was passed overwhelmingly, with only a small number of votes against and in a hall much fuller than usual for a Sunday morning emergency motion slot.

Meanwhile, Caron Lindsay has asked the question: “When is it ok to scream and swear at a 14-year-old?”

UPDATE: The Social Liberal Forum, who proposed the motion, have written up the debate on their site.