Letter From Nigel Henderson To The Conservative Party

4/15/2015

As SME Alliance is not a political organisation, except for the fact we lobby and talk to any party that will listen to us. So while most of the members share their feelings about banks to each other, we rarely talk about who we do or don't support in the upcoming election. However, a couple of days we circulated a letter sent from the Conservative party to members asking for their support. I make the point we would circulate any letter from other parties to SME Alliance as well. I don't know how many of our members replied to give their support or not. With the exception of Nigel Henderson who has written an extremely powerful and heartfelt letter which he has shared with us and which is published below.

8 Comments

Mark Rogers link

4/20/2015 12:15:15 am

This is an extremely well written letter and I too would like to see some indication from our government as to how and when FAIR redress is going to to e made to the legions of SME's who have been robbed by the banks who we once trusted.

Nigel Henderson

4/20/2015 01:47:03 am

Thanks Mark. It is a long and difficult struggle which I hope collectively we will see the positive conclusion of. I have tried repeatedly to generate a response to my letter but sadly it appears to have fallen on deaf ears. I think the only prospect of obtaining redress is through prosecution at the courts and only then will the politicians be exposed for being as useless as they are on this issue.

Miss S Old

4/20/2015 08:16:35 am

how does anyone know whether or not you are right in your case against RBS- if politicians just backed one side or the other in private disputes then this would be unfair. Politicians should therefore stay out of the types of disputes.

Mark Rogers link

4/20/2015 05:11:01 pm

Miss Old,

Initially we thought as you do. However when you discover it is not just you who has been preyed upon but also tens of thousands of others all in similar often almost identical fashion it ceases to become a sole matter and moves into the public domain. We along with many of our peers have been judged by the regulator to have been mis-sold (defrauded?). We should like to have our money and in many cases our livelihoods back. this is all most of us are appealing for.
There are many tens of thousands of others who are currently being denied access to any form of remedy and their cases should at least be examined by the regulator which many are currently being excluded from being allowed.
For instance a group of multinational firms all with assets of trillions of pounds systematically robbed you and your family of of thousands of pounds would you still not wish for some redress. Most PPI scams are now being redressed the IRHP scandal is barely even noticed as it only affects 10 of thousands of SME's many of whom initially think they should have known until the complexity of what has happened is revealed to them. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost as a result of this with thousands of small firms being forced to close.
Do you really believe that this is something that our elected officials and law makers should ignore.

Miss S Old

4/21/2015 04:30:42 am

Your points are fair but different to mine.
There is a huge difference between access to a remedy and whether or not you find the remedy acceptable.
Take Mr Henderson. What's the bottom line - he thinks the outcome should be x, his bank disagrees and thinks it should be y.
I think you would agree that no MP or government can reasonably be in a position to know whether Mr Henderson or the bank is right (some wade in on the side of the customer having seen just one side of the story like Bebb, however I would question this).
Should the government simply do nothing- of course not, they are responsible for ensuring a fair framework for disputes to be heard. There is a framework (complaints, fos, redress schemes, courts). Not everyone gets the same access to all these remedies. This must be right- a line needs to be drawn somewhere (for example if absolutely everyone could go to fos it would make fos unworkable and negate the benefit).
The difficult (and unenviable) judgement is where to draw the lines. Inevitably people on the wrong side of the line feel aggrieved, but that does not mean the government is failing in its duties- it is a judgement.

The rather binary "everyone's against us" approach, reflected in Mr Henderson's letter is simplistic and unrealistic.

Nikki Turner link

4/22/2015 05:17:47 am

The problem is Miss S Old, politicians, whether deliberately or not, have backed one side - the bank's side. It is a well established fact that many banks have broken the law in various ways - money laundering, asset theft, Libor rigging etc etc. But it's also a fact that in almost every case, no one is held responsible and banks, or rather their shareholders, pay their way out of trouble with huge fines.

While the era of elite, lawless bankers started under New Labour, I think many SME owners felt this would change under the Coalition and even staunch Tory voters like Nigel, are very concerned and confused this has not happen. In the run up to the last election, David Cameron was extremely vociferous about holding bankers to account: ww.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4348801/David-Cameron-calls-for-criminal-actions-against-bankers.html

Has it happened? No. The consequence is banks continue to abuse SMEs and refuse to give redress where it is blatantly due, because they have got used to the idea they are above the law. To the extent that even where a Judge finds for an SME owner (e.g Derek Carlyle) the bank (RBS in this case) still does nothing to remedy the situation.

Additionally banks quite rightly believe the majority of SMEs cannot afford to challenge them in the Courts because we have been priced out of the justice system. And the recent decrease in legal aid and increase in Court fees has compounded this inequitable situation.

No one, least of all Nigel Henderson is asking the Conservatives or any other party to take a view on an individual case. What Nigel and SME Alliance are asking for is fair access to justice so we can get Courts to hear our cases – whether civil or criminal.

As someone who has spent years investigating bank misconduct, I can assure you wilful blindness by all the main parties has resulted in a two tier justice system. Which is why Nigel is right - the question of the abuse of SMEs by the financial sector is highly political and something that should have been dealt with – and it is disappointing in the extreme that the last administration has let the bad situation caused by Labour's light touch regulation, get worse and not better.

Governments over the last seven years have given banks billions from the public coffers. At the very least Governments should make sure banks and bankers abide by the same law as everyone else. And if that simple logic were applied, it would eliminate many of the problems SMEs have.

I would just add a final note though – SME Alliance have tried to talk to all the main parties to put across the case for SME issues and only the Conservatives have opened any dialogue with us. So while Nigel is more than entitled to his views, as is every victim of bank abuse who has lost a business or a home or, as in many cases, both. However, credit where it's due and at least we are talking to the Conservatives. We still hope the other parties will talk to us as well. We also hope at least one of the major parties will start to highlight 'law and order' or 'justice' issues – which to date aren't in their manifesto's.

Adamski

4/30/2015 07:47:59 am

Sadly nothing in the party manifestos about prosecuting any of these banksters. On the Labour v SNP front though, each wants a Scottish Business Development Bank / British Investment Bank. Labour's also says "We will increase competition .... we want a market share test and at least two new challenger banks." The SNP have nothing like this.

Olin McGill

5/2/2015 09:29:22 pm

Has the magnitude of the depredations against SMEs been quantified? Might this be a factor in the lagging productivity experienced the last several years

Letter From Nigel Henderson To The Conservative Party

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