Chancellor urged to follow Thatcher's lead with bank tax

BRITAIN’S banking giants find themselves under scrutiny once more as Rachel Reeves confronts fresh pressure to increase levies on financial institutions.

- SAMUEL NORMAN

The self-proclaimed “iron Chancellor” has been urged to emulate Margaret Thatcher's approach by implementing a new charge on banks that could deliver the Treasury as much as £8 billion annually.

This proposed levy - put forward by the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) - would target profits derived from banks’ quantitative easing (QE) reserves.

Carsten Jung, associate director for economic policy at IPPR, said the “flawed policy design” of QE meant “public money is flowing straight into commercial banks’ coffers’.