Is the banking inquiry now a “total joke“?

Inquiry criticised after outspoken MPs are left off its membership.

The parliamentary inquiry into banking hasn’t even begun but it’s already being dismissed as a “whitewash”. The reason? The two most combative MPs on the Treasury select committee, Labour MP John Mann and Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom, have been left off its membership.

Mann has already responded on Twitter, angrily denouncing the commission as a “total joke” and vowing to set up his own inquiry into the rate-rigging scandal. Here’s his statement:

Both Andrea and I were available for the Inquiry and because we are too outspoken we have been blocked

This exposes the Inquiry as a total whitewash with Andrew Tyrie reaching his conclusions in advance of the meetings.

We need to get to the bottom of this scandal and I’m therefore setting up my own inquiry into this dreadful mess.

It was Mann who said of Bob Diamond at last week’s hearing: “Either you were complicit in what was going on, or you were grossly negligent, or you were grossly incompetent. That is the only conclusion”.

We haven’t heard from Leadsom yet, but her 25-year career in the banking sector, including 10 years at Barclays, was widely thought to have made her the most effective inquisitor. In addition, she demonstrated her independent-mindedness earlier this week with her call for George Osborne to apologise to Ed Balls for suggesting that he had “questions to answer” over the Libor scandal. (A fact that some are suggesting may lie behind her absence.)

Those who have made the cut, other than inquiry chair Andrew Tyrie, are Conservative MP Mark Garnier, Labour MPs Pat McFadden and Andy Love, and Lib Dem MP John Thurso, all of whom were reportedly selected on the advice of their parties. They may yet prove an effective line-up (and QCs will question witnesses on the inquiry’s behalf) but given their “useless” performance against Diamond (in the words of Leadsom) they begin from a position of weakness. The hand of those who argue that only a judge-led inquiry will do has been considerably strengthened by the exclusion of Leadsom and Mann.