Lloyds Banking Group faces mounting stress from MPs, enterprise teams, and a employees union to launch the total, unredacted findings of the Dame Linda Dobbs assessment, a report analyzing Lloyds’ dealing with of a £1 billion fraud at HBOS, which the financial institution acquired in 2009.
The delay has drawn criticism, with figures like Lord Tyrie, former Treasury committee chairman, labelling the protracted course of as “itself becoming a scandal.”
The assessment, commissioned in 2017 and initially anticipated to take a “matter of months,” goals to analyze whether or not Lloyds coated up the HBOS Studying department fraud, the place bankers and consultants exploited reckless lending practices to steal from the financial institution. The scandal wreaked havoc on small companies, leaving victims in monetary spoil and ensuing within the jailing of six folks in 2017.
Regardless of the preliminary dedication in 2018 by Lloyds to share the assessment’s findings, the financial institution has but to make clear whether or not this may embrace the total report. Former Treasury committee chair Baroness Morgan of Cotes expressed disappointment, stating she “expected to see a full, unredacted report—not just the conclusions.”
Conservative MP Kevin Hollinrake, former enterprise minister, has joined the decision for transparency, urging Lloyds CEO Charlie Nunn to launch the total report. In a letter, he wrote, “This report was commissioned to bring clarity, transparency and accountability following one of the most significant banking scandals in recent memory.” Hollinrake warned of the long-term implications of withholding info from the general public.
Lobbying teams SME Alliance and Transparency Activity Drive, representing victims of the fraud, have expressed comparable frustrations, emphasising that Lloyds shouldn’t management the publication of a report into alleged misconduct inside its personal operations. SME Alliance acknowledged, “Lloyds should not be allowed to control the publication strategy for a report looking into an alleged cover-up that Lloyds itself perpetrated.”
Lord Tyrie added that the committee has a “great opportunity to reassert parliament’s commitment to transparency.” He advised that if Lloyds doesn’t cooperate, MPs may compel key witnesses to testify or apply extra parliamentary stress to entry the total report.
BTU, the most important unbiased union for Lloyds employees, has written to Treasury Committee chair Dame Meg Hillier, requesting that Dobbs seem earlier than MPs to elucidate the delays. Dobbs, who favours transparency, has indicated that the provision of witnesses has contributed to the report’s prolonged timeline, now stretching over six years.
In response to the most recent requires transparency, a Lloyds spokesperson reiterated the financial institution’s dedication to sharing the assessment’s findings however stopped in need of confirming the discharge of an unredacted report.
The Treasury committee, which has remained silent on the problem, could face growing stress to intervene and be sure that the total particulars of the report are made public. With the assessment ongoing, questions of accountability and transparency cling over Lloyds, as MPs and campaigners alike demand solutions for the scandal’s many victims.
