Brown calls for 'morals' in financial markets

Gordon Brown has used his keynote speech at the Labour conference in Brighton to call for a new era of ’morals’ in banking and finance.

The prime minister pledged to get tough on senior figures who show negligence in their running of banks, as well as intervening over the distribution of bonuses when bankers ’put the economy at risk’.

Chancellor Alistair Darling has also spoken about putting an end to automatic bonuses for the banking world’s top management figures in Brighton this week.

Mr Brown told his party: ’Markets need what they cannot generate themselves; they need what the British people alone can bring to them, I say to you today: markets need morals.’

The prime minister is believed to favour a ’claw-back’ system in which banks will be able to reclaim bonus payments if they suffer losses at a later date.

In addition, new rules scheduled to be introduced by the Financial Services Authority next year will attempt to link remuneration more closely to long-term profitability.

During his speech on Monday (September 28th), Mr Darling said that Labour should be ’proud’ of the way the government handled the financial crisis.
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