{"id":4712,"date":"2015-07-09T11:54:10","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T10:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=4712"},"modified":"2015-07-09T11:54:10","modified_gmt":"2015-07-09T10:54:10","slug":"banks-back-to-dark-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=4712","title":{"rendered":"Banks back to &#8216;dark ages&#8217;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Following yesterday&#8217;s Budget (July 8), Unite warned\u00c2\u00a0George Osborne that his plan to scrap the bank levy shows the Tory government are ditching their responsibility to bring order to the financial industry.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Ending the levy, along with the sell-off of Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland, underlines the hands-off attitude of the Tories, a position which emboldens boardrooms to return to the reckless behaviour that led to the financial crisis.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In the Budget Osborne announced the levy, which raised \u00c2\u01411.9bn for the treasury last year, will be phased out over six years. The levy will be replaced by an 8 per cent surcharge on profits.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite believes\u00c2\u00a0this could lead to the largest banks, such as HSBC, paying less to the treasury overall. A surcharge tax will also be partially cancelled out by the planned decreases in corporation tax.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bBy promising to scrap the bank levy George Osborne will win applause from the City boardrooms, but he is turning his back on the banking industry as a whole, allowing senior executives to return it to the dark ages that led to the financial crash,&#8221; said Dominic Hook, Unite national officer for finance.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe bank levy forced the boardrooms to pay for the crisis they caused with a tax on their balance sheets. The ending of the levy, coupled with the sell-off of the public\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stake in both Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland, underlines this government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hands-off approach to the banks.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis sends all the wrong signals to the banking industry. Already we have seen the board of Barclays, emboldened by this government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stance, announce the sacking of their CEO and a potential acceleration of job cuts and branch closures.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following yesterday&#8217;s Budget (July 8), Unite warned\u00c2\u00a0George Osborne that his plan to scrap the bank levy shows the Tory government are ditching their responsibility to bring order to the financial industry. &nbsp; Ending the levy, along with the sell-off of Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland, underlines the hands-off attitude of the Tories, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3009,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[291,177],"wps_subtitle":"Scrapping bank levy is wrong move says Unite","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4713,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4712\/revisions\/4713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}