Public opinion: Your blogs

Chancellor signals his support but a hard slog ahead

Although the headlines about the pre-budget report will inevitably be about the tax on bankers’ bonuses and the Social Investment Bank being set up, the real news from my point of view was a commitment 'explore options' on better disclosure of how banks provide services to disadvantaged communities.

Stripping aside the jargon, what this means is that they want banks to disclose information about how they are meeting the needs of poor communities – the first and most fundamental of our four campaign proposals. Of course there are one or two caveats and a lot of detail still to be worked out, but I think that’s cause for some celebration.

Although it’s easy to become obsessed with the semantics of the statement, the main weakness in the announcement is that they're talking about 'services' which may not include 'investment' in poor communities. Clearly services are important but so too is the flow of money in and out of deprived neighbourhoods.

But whichever way you look at it, it's real progress and an important first step towards achieving our aims. I'm certain that we would not have seen today’s announcement without the effort that Urban Forum and our partners have been putting into our campaign.

It seems as if the calls for a Community Reinvestment Act and a credit cap are growing almost daily. Great to see Save the Children’s new campaign calling for a CRA and the London Citizens’ campaign which includes both a CRA and a credit cap. And Debt On Our Doorstep are lobbying Peter Mandelson to introduce a credit cap campaign, on the back of an excellent Dispatches programme investigating predatory lenders. 

It appears as if the politicians are starting to take note. There are some very encouraging noises coming out of government and the Guardian’s headline on Tuesday ‘Labour opens new front in battle with the City’ - suggests policy-makers in Whitehall may be warming to our proposals.

 I think that we should all be very pleased with this progress...but we've still got a long way to go! 

Well done and thank you for all your support. Let's hope this is the start of even greater things to come!