Andrew Bailey (pictured), deputy governor for prudential regulation, called for a crack down on ‘private lobbying’ as he blamed it for contributing to the crash of 2008, the Daily Telegraph reports.
“There was great pressure on regulators to back off because we were in good times,” he said.
His comments followed the outgoing governor’s attack on the banks for putting ‘tremendous pressure’ on both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
Sir Mervyn King said on Tuesday: “There were certainly calls made to Number 11 and even to Number 10 to try and put pressure on supervisors to modify – be more reasonable – in their judgments.”
Mr Bailey said lobbying ‘has increased over the last 20 years’ and now threatens to undermine efforts to build a ‘stable, accountable and transparent institutional structure’ at the Bank.
“To do that there have to be ground rules about how things are done and the very large amount of private lobbying is not consistent with having a transparent accountable and open process where we can be held to account, the banks can be held to account, and the government can be held to account,” he said.
“It makes it all the more hard to achieve a stable institutional structure for regulation.”
