The former Archbishop of Canterbury has a big idea: he wants a priest to sit on every company board. Then, he claims, there would be no scandals such as Parmalat and Enron

I hear news of Robert Maxwell. He's in Hell. The source for this well-informed view is no less an authority than George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.

While hobnobbing with business leaders in Davos, Lord Carey was asked by the Times whether the former publisher was in Hell, and he replied: "I would have thought so."

For tens of thousands of defrauded Mirror Group pensioners, and thousands more employees and journalists who had anything to do with the monstrous bully, this will come as a relief.

Alas, Carey immediately qualified his opinion, adding - with all the conviction we've come to expect from the Church of England - "I don't know. Look, God is a god of love. I'm glad I don't have to make that decision."

Carey is apparently a regular at the exclusive annual jamboree of the World Economic Forum. He is anxious to convert the legions of tycoons and ministers who congregate there to the virtues of a more caring capitalism. His big idea this year is that we need more members of the clergy in the boardrooms of the world's biggest companies. They would act as "moral guardians", and so prevent further financial scandals such as Parmalat, he claims. Giving priests the odd non-executive directorship would certainly have the advantage of boosting the incomes of our impoverished clerics. The typical non-executive director's fee in a British blue chip is £40,000 a year for a few days' work. But the notion that disasters such as Enron, WorldCom and Parmalat could have been prevented if there had been a priest in the boardroom to give spiritual guidance is risible.

Carey's view of the boardroom seems to be a cartoon world where wicked capitalists rub their hands with glee and openly debate how best to fleece the shareholders, defraud the customers and screw the workforce. All that is needed in this simple world is an earnest man in a dog collar to point out the sins of his colleagues and show them the path to righteousness.

In reality, the perpetration of fraud is much more subtle. Fraudsters don't put their scams to a vote of directors. They conceal their crimes in complex company networks and opaque transactions that even the most ferret-like forensic accountants find difficult to unravel.

All that a priest on the board is likely to achieve is to give the most dodgy plc an undeserved air of respectability.

Carey's choice of Parmalat to illustrate his views was particularly daft. The company, which has gone bust with around £10bn missing, was strongly connected to the Roman Catholic Church. The founder, Calisto Tanzi, now under arrest in Milan's San Vittore jail, was always lending the company jet to prelates and used company money to restore Parma's ancient cathedral. If I were a Parmalat creditor, I'd not be regretting the absence of priests in the boardroom. I'd be demanding a refund from the Vatican.

After personal pensions, endowments, split capital trusts and precipice bonds, you can already spot the seeds of the next misselling scandal. Britain's fund management industry is starting to lobby the authorities to be allowed to market hedge fund investments to ordinary members of the public, a practice that is currently banned. Hedge funds are lightly regulated beasts. They take bets - sometimes highly leveraged ones - on any financial outcome you care to name, from the price of pork bellies to the direction of interest rates. The ones run by the smartest brains do very well. Unfortunately, you can be dead certain it won't be the ones run by the smartest brains that are offered to the general public. They are fully subscribed and don't want more money. (They can't get too big because, as on the racecourse, the price moves against the punter trying to place too large a bet.) It will be the second-raters who try to tap small investors if the rules are relaxed. The potential for trouble is obvious.

I hesitate to confess this to sensibly green readers of the New Statesman, but I drive a gas-guzzling Land Rover Freelander. Things go wrong frequently. The windows steam up whatever you do to the ventilation switches. The electrics have a mind of their own. It's only three years old and already the clutch has had to be replaced.

I'm not alone. Readers of the BBC's Top Gear magazine have just voted the top-selling Freelander as one of the least satisfactory models for reliability, driving satisfaction and dealer service, ranking it a lowly 130th out of 137. The Jaguar XJ series, by contrast, was ranked first. Ford owns both Land Rover and Jaguar, and Land Rover employees are striking for equal pay to their Jaguar counterparts. Perhaps they should strive for equal product quality first.

Patrick Hosking is deputy City editor of the London Evening Standard

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website