29 SEPTEMBER 1928, Page 3

Apart from various suggestions in the Labour Report such as

that there should be more Municipal and Co-operative Banks, and that under a proper system of banking credit should be refused to " useless " industries—surely a grotesque and dangerous proposal, for a banker is not a moral censor—the main point of the Report is that the Bank of England is concerned with the interests of the few. It is proposed that the Court of the Bank of England should include representatives of the Treasury, the Board of Trade, industry, Labour and the Co-operative movement. This would mean in practice, we fear, that partisan interests would be imported, predominantly of a political kind. That would be fatal. It is essential that the Bank of England should be not a State body but a quasi-State body, as it is now.

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