Paying for the past
DEREGULATION IS a certain bet for the white paper but something of a talking horse. There will be plans to chip away old regulations (Factories Acts, Shops and Offices Acts) and make room for new ones. The Department of the Environment is happy to contribute. It has revived the idea, first sponsored by its luckless minister Tim Yeo, that banks should be liable for the costs of pollution — though Mr Yeo might not have chosen to call its policy document `Paying for the past'. Environmental audi- tors (not quite such a contradiction as envi- ronmental lawyers) will be winging their way across the Atlantic. That will teach the banks not to go around lending money to companies. The Prezza's own department has weighed in with a plan to erode their security. Borrowers in trouble would be allowed a moratorium — four weeks to keep their creditors at bay. Imagine what Robert Maxwell could have done with four weeks' grace! We would never have seen him or the assets again. Banks will find it harder to take charges on companies' assets. Sir Chips Keswick, chairman of Hambros Bank and a director of the Bank of England, calls this a sure way to make it more difficult for under-capitalised busi- nesses, and small businesses in general, to borrow. Deregulation begins at home.
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