Comment: a safer banking sector is the aim

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What the biggest shake-up in banking's history should achieve is a safer and more competitive industry. One in which banks can be allowed to fail without doing huge damage to the economy. One in which taxpayers are never again forced to pump in tens of billions of pounds to rescue banks. One in which consumers and businesses can make clear and easy choices between banks.

The Independent Commission on Banking's 363-page report is well-written and argued - it helps that two of the five commissioners have been writers at the Financial Times.

It would be easy to say that today's final report is a watered-down version of some of the proposals made in the interim report. There has been clear political input between then and now.

Certainly the fact that Vickers is giving banks until the start of 2019 to enact his changes looks like something of a let-off. It isn't. That date coincides with the introduction of Basel III. Vickers is absolutely right to give them that long to affect changes which he happily admits go much further than Basel III.

Ring-fencing rather than full separation makes sense. The two big failures which hit this country in 2007 and 2008 were Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers, neither of which was a universal bank.

As the Commission sits down to its farewell dinner at the Reform Club tonight it should toast the fact that it has made the best of a nigh-impossible task.