Lloyds Bank urged to release full HBOS review
Lloyds Banking Group has been told it must publish a “full copy” of the long-delayed report into the mishandling of the HBOS Reading scandal.
Dame Meg Hillier, who chairs the Treasury Committee, has backed campaigners’ calls for Lloyds to be transparent in private correspondence obtained by The Times.
This follows Lloyds’ pledge to “fulfil any requests” the committee makes regarding the £1bn banking fraud.
The Transparency Task Force had previously written to Hillier and claimed the lender was attempting to “hide” the full review.
Lloyds, which commissioned and financed the report, said it would share the reports’ “findings” but did not commit to total disclosure.
The scandal, which dates back to 2007, involved manipulated credit arrangements at Lloyds’ HBOS subsidiary, which resulted in financial hits for multiple small businesses.
A former HBOS banker and five financials were jailed in 2017 for their role in the scandal but many victims claimed they had still not received compensation.
Review was expected to take ‘a matter of months’
Retired High Court judge Dame Linda Dobbs was appointed in 2017 to lead the review and said it would take “a matter of months”, but it is yet to be completed.
Hillier’s comments come from a letter addressed to the founder of the Transparency Task Force, Andy Agathangelou, who had been lobbying for further scrutiny of the report.
Agathangelou had asked the Treasury Committee to consider probing why the report was taking so long.
Hillier wrote: “I agree that it is essential that the Dobbs review is concluded and published as soon as possible.
“To that end, I observe that additional scrutiny activity by the committee would be more likely to delay rather than accelerate publication.”
She added: “Dame Linda Dobbs should complete her review as quickly as possible without select committee scrutiny cutting across her investigations and conclusions.”
Agathangelou said the committee provided a “clear and ambiguous” message that a “full and unredacted copy of the review must be published, which is exactly what victims of egregious banking misconduct have been hoping for”.
Lloyds declined to comment on the intervention, however, a spokesperson told The Times: “We stand by our commitments to the committee and look forward to co-operating with them.”