Be informed

So, Stephen Hester has declined his £1m bonus. Well done.

This morning’s radio comments on the issue have been revealing and need a more robust response. Though I give credit to Evan Davis again for challenging one interviewee who suggested that firms need to be able to pay on the basis of desert. Davis came back very quickly and said that the logic of capitalism was that firms try to get labour as cheaply as possible. Only senior managers seem to think that they deserve high salaries.

Stephen Hestor, noted Robert Peston on the Today programme, is a ‘determined man’ who may find himself with job offers to go to other banks where he could claim his bonus without political interference. Here are the things to say to all of those senior bankers – and anyone else who thinks that they deserve more.

Go. If you can find a better place to live than London, go. Second, having got us into this mess, you might feel that you have some responsibility to help clean up the mess. The banking sector owes the taxpayer a lot of money and gratitude. There wouldn’t be a banking sector without us. Go to Beijing, Singapore, Dubai. We really need a reformed banking sector – one that serves the citizens rather than exploits them. We want small businesses to be able to function and develop. Banks, as they are currently manifested, are a hindrance.

Finally, I have heard the argument that we need Stephen Hestor so that we can return the bank to the private sector and retrieve the £45bn or so that we have invested. At the moment it is ‘worth’ half of that. The experience from Northern Rock is that we will not get our money back with or without Stephen Hestor with or without his bonus.