The City watchdog has handed over its report into Royal Bank of Scotland’s mistreatment of small businesses to MPs, but has decided not to make it public.
Andrew Bailey, head of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), was last week ordered by Treasury Select Committee chairwoman Nicky Morgan to release the report into Global Restructuring Group, the lender’s controversial restructuring arm.
But on Friday, Mr Bailey said that “publication by the FCA has proved impossible” for legal reasons.
It comes after the FCA was heavily criticised for “completely” losing control of the review, which was leaked online and shared openly on social media overnight.
Mr Bailey added: “It is regrettable that the report has been leaked but this does not allow us to publish.
“I do want to make it clear that it is not our intention to frustrate or impede the work of the committee, quite the reverse in fact, and with that in mind we are providing the report as required.”
Mrs Morgan has said the influential committee could make the report public itself using parliamentary privilege as early as next week after its meeting on Tuesday February 20.
“At that meeting, I will be asking members to agree to publish the final, unredacted report under parliamentary privilege as soon as possible,” Mrs Morgan said.
However, under-fire Mr Bailey has cautioned the MPs against publishing the report themselves, having said in an earlier letter: “If the committee decides itself to publish the report, it will no doubt want to consider carefully the precedent of publishing a document obtained from the FCA under Parliamentary Privilege where the FCA considers that it is legally constrained from publishing the document itself.”
RBS has been dogged by allegations that GRG intentionally pushed small businesses towards failure in the hope of picking up their assets on the cheap.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here