When appointing Clifford Chance to carry out a review, the bank said that it had 'appointed Clifford Chance to undertake a thorough and independent review' - words echoed by the firm itself when it later titled its report as an 'independent review'. So it is embarrassing to both bank and law firm that MPs on the Treasury Select Committee this week concluded that there was no such independence. The MPs state: 'The Clifford Chance review of RBS’s treatment of distressed customers, principally by the Global Restructuring Group, was welcomed by RBS as finding “no evidence of systematic defrauding of business customers”. However, the review—overseen by a bank executive rather than an non-executive director—was not independent, was based on narrow terms of reference, and left a number of questions unanswered, such as why GRG could not explain the size of fees it had charged, and the accuracy of its asset valuations.'

Bank of England

The 17 MPs published their report 'Conduct and competition in SME lending' this week. The report comes in the same month as the Bank of England was criticised on similar grounds. The Bank had asked Lord Grabiner QC to conduct an investigation into the Bank. Like Clifford Chance and RBS, Lord Grabiner found little to criticise. However, a subsequent report published in early March concluded that Lord Grabiner was following a narrow brief and that it did not get to the root of the problems at the bank. It then emerged that the Bank of England - chief regulator of banks in the UK - is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office. Source: Treasury Select Committee