Regarding the news that the Complaints Commissioner has criticised the Financial Conduct Authority over inaction by the regulator over adviser tip-offs (June 7): Basically, the Complaints Commissioner has determined that the FCA has not taken on board (or at least not put into practice) the lessons it claims to have learned from its previous failings, despite its routine claims to have done so.
Should the commissioner not recommend that the FCA draws up and publishes for all to see and to debate in open forum a whistleblowers’ charter?
Then again, even if it were to do so, who would oversee its adherence to such a charter?
No such body presently exists, even though it is quite obvious that one is needed, for which the prime candidate must surely be the Treasury Committee.
A few crocodile tears with promises to do better going forward are nothing more than a hollow charade of accountability.
We have seen it all before, countless times, yet nothing ever actually changes.
The FCA retains its free hand to set its own agenda, to do whatever it wants and to ignore that which it does not.
When is parliament going to wake up to and do something about this manifestly unsatisfactory state of affairs?
On that note, what has been Andrew Bailey’s response to calls from a cross-party committee of 16 MP’s for him to step down in the wake of the FCA’s completely inadequate handling of the London Capital & Finance debacle?
That was another train wreck waiting to happen, of which the FCA received plenty of reports with which it did nothing until it was far too late and the damage had been done.
Who will be billed for the compensation that the Financial Services Compensation Scheme is now considering paying out to all the victims of the FCA’s ineptitude?
Julian Stevens
Harvest Financial
Scams left unresolved
On return from a recent holiday, there was a message on my voicemail. The voice was female with a strong US accent.
She told me that she was from HM Revenue & Customs and that there was a serious issue and that if I did not call back within the next 90 seconds there would be severe consequences.
Naturally, I recognised this as a scam.
I reported it to Action Fraud (by phone) and even played them the recording, which I later attached in an email with further particulars.
After about a month I received a letter from them in the post telling me that this was not their province and they would not be taking further action.
I have subsequently discovered that this call has been received quite widely.
