Caroline Lucas - The Darling Plan

Caroline Lucas:

"If we're going to be asked to bail out the banks, we want something for our money. We want to know that the banks are going to be run responsibly from now on, and that means, as part owners of these banks, we want our fair share of the votes on the board ... Ordinary people, who have been landed with the bill, should be represented in the boardrooms. We should use those votes to cut the excessive bonus rewards to failing executives, clamp down on predatory, irresponsible lending practices, and to demerge the mega-banks into smaller, more accountable firms so that this can never happen again ... By creating cast-iron government bonds as a secure home for pension funds and personal savings, and investing that money in green-collar work such as renewable energy or mass transit, we could end the financial panic, generate jobs, revitalise money flows, loosen ties to unreliable oil markets and cut carbon emissions."