Adair Turner, the head of Britain’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), has criticized opposition Conservative lawmakers’ plans to disband the agency if they win this year’s election.
During an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Lord Turner said it is not something he would have done in the middle of a financial crisis.
Tory plans would return lender supervision to the Bank of England, and create a new consumer agency for the rest of the FSA’s powers. In July last year, the Labour Government published ‘Reforming Financial Markets’, a report setting out its analysis of the causes of the financial crisis and its agenda for regulatory reform. The Conservatives responded with their own report entitled ‘From Crisis to Confidence: Plan for Sound Banking’.
Financial regulation has become a rallying point for political parties since the start of the credit crisis in 2007. Prime Minister Gordon Brown created the FSA in 1997 as one of his first acts as Tony Blair’s finance minister. The Conservatives argue the agency was too lax and was partly to blame for the worst market turmoil in a generation.
