Morning:
3°c
THE Bank of England is the lender of last resort for British banks. That is part of its function.
It has routinely issued banks which have temporary liquidity problems with sufficient funds to tide them over their embarrassments.
So in principle the fact that the Bank lent HBOS and RBS £61.6 billion at the height of the financial crisis, last October and November, to ensure they continued to function, was not in itself remarkable.
What is remarkable, and deserving censure, is that this guarantee is only now coming to light. The Bank's deputy governor, Paul Tucker, told the Commons Treasury Select Committee that "this was a dire emergency".
It certainly was, and in the circumstances there might have been good reason for the guarantee to have been kept secret for a short time. But for a year? The loans lasted from October last year to January.
What the Bank - and specifically the Governor, Mervyn King - appears not to understand is that this is our money.
Taxpayers bailed out the banks; we are entitled to know how our money is being spent. And if the Governor does not understand that, the Chancellor, Alistair Darling certainly should.
Frankly, the scale of the taxpayer bailout of the banks last year was so enormous and the sums bandied about so huge, that the Bank could have included another £61.6 billion in the total without adding materially to public outrage.
It is the reflex to secrecy that is so worrying. Mervyn King seems instinctively to want to keep the Bank's sensitive operations out of public view.
The question we must now ask is, what other bail-outs, what other operations, are being kept from us? After this, it's hard to trust either the Governor or the Chancellor.
Food for thought
The Government is trying to make us eat less meat. A report in the Lancet today, based on a study partly funded by the Department of Health, recommends that the number of animals bred for meat should be reduced by 30 per cent. The Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, backs the report, on public health and environmental grounds.
But is it really that simple? Granted, ruminants, specifically cattle, emit methane. But the effect of meat on the environment depends to a great extent on where and how it is produced and how far it is transported.
Beef produced in South America on cattle ranches for which forests have been cleared, which is then transported to Europe, is environmentally damaging in several respects.
But British beef, if produced in an environmentally sensitive manner and transported as short a distance as possible, is less problematic.
It would help if meat, in supermarkets and in catering, were clearly labelled to show its country of origin. Farmers are custodians of the environment. And, according to the National Farmers Union, their carbon emissions account for only one per cent of the UK total.
By all means, let ministers encourage us to adopt a varied diet - though fish is scarce. But a blanket target to reduce the number of animals bred for meat is crude.
There are other means of reducing carbon emissions: today the Forestry Commission recommends that another four per cent of our land mass should be used to plant trees. That is an iniative we can all support.
Cyclists in danger
Yet another cyclist has been killed on London's roads. Tanya Van Der Loo, a young City accountant, died after a collision with a motorcyclist.
This tragedy is a reminder of how much remains to be done - in line with our Safer Cycling Campaign - to make London fit for cyclists.
