The Banks Must Pay Back To The Taxpayer Every Penny From The Bailout

The behaviour of the banking sector brought immense damage to the British and global economy. The taxpayer had to bail out the banks for their folly as they came close to collapse. Indeed, the Treasury estimated in April 2009 that there may be a loss to the taxpayer of between £20 billion and £50 billion because of the banking bailout.

Now, less than two years after highly paid bankers paid a large part in bringing the global economy to the verge of collapse, multi million bonuses are being paid again and the banks are failing to meet their obligations to provide loans to business to help get the economy moving again. I have made clear before that this is simply not good enough. It is also time to make clear that the banks need to pay back to the taxpayer every penny used to rescue them in the bailout package.

Gordon Brown spent 13 years cosying up to the banks and allowing our economy to become terribly unbalanced in favour of financial services. His lack of regulation created the conditions for the banking crisis. In the same time, we have seen over 95,000 manufacturing jobs lost in our region alone and the economic gap between the North East and other regions has grown.

We need bold leadership over financial regulation and bold leadership to get the back for taxpayers every penny we put in to rescue the banking sector. We need to tackle the vested interests in the banking sector. That is why we need to introduce a new bank levy to get our money back from the banks and to protect taxpayers in the future. It is why we must also seek international agreement on an international banking levy.