John McFall MP at Co-op Party meeting




This morning I was at the Co-operative Party's Summerfest in St Andrews the main speaker this morning was John McFall the Labour and Co-op MP for West Dunbartonshire and chair of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee. For me it was good to see John, he taught chemistry at my school. John was speaking on The Global Financial Crisis – Co-op and Mutual Solutions. It was great to listen to someone who is so knowledgeable about the financial markets. It is clear that we need to have better and clearer regulation in the financial markets. We need to ensure that rewards are for long term performance rather than for chasing quick and unsustainable profits.

We need to ensure that the boards of banks include representatives of workers and stakeholders like customers. John also led a very interesting discussion on whether there should be gender balance on the boards of banks arguing that one of the problems was that bank boards were generally made up of very similar people and that non-executive directors had not asked the right questions in the run up to the credit crunch. It is clear that co-operative and mutual solutions offer a different way of running banks and they should be examined by the government.
The Co-operative Party is running a campaign on this called the Feeling's Mutual it's worth a look.