BANKS AND QUANTITATIVE EASING

That this House notes with considerable anger the report in the Financial Times of 18 October 2011 that a commercial bank has sought to manipulate the market in the light of the latest round of quantitative easing (QE)undertaken by the Bank of England by buying gilts ahead of the QE auction in order topush their price higher and thus profit at the expense of the taxpayer and the economy overall; further notes that this blatant attempt by a bank to make afast profitout of the QE auction process may not be an isolated example in the current or past rounds ofQE; and calls on the Government to launch an immediate investigation and to report to Parliament as soon as practicable and also to make it clear that this obscene attempt to exploit the current economic crisis by the very bankers who brought about the crisis will not be tolerated and is further evidence of themoral bankruptcy of sections of our finance sector continuing to speculate at the country's expense when 2.5 million are unemployed and jobs and services are being cut.