An open letter to Ronnie Campbell MP

Dear Sir,

I am an 80 year old pensioner living in the North East who invested in Northern Rock some years ago on the understanding that the banks of this country were regarded as being as "safe as houses" and usually guaranteed to produce a reasonable return to investors. The circumstances that NRK experienced appear to have much in common with those that many of the major banks are encountering at the present time if my interpretation of newspaper reports is right. Yet these banks are being effectively supported by the Special Liquidity Scheme set by the Government after we had our shares removed.

Yvette Cooper quoted recently in the "Guardian" called the action taken by the Government as "nationalisation", but Gordon Brown is quoted as calling it "Temporary Public Ownership" and saying that ultimately NRK would likely be returned to private ownership at a profit. If the Government felt obliged to take it over in order to make it profitable then surely the shareholders who maintained their investment to the bitter end because of their faith in the British banking system should again resume ownership or be compensated for their loss.

As you are a MP for part of the North East I, along with countless others in this part of the country, automatically look to you to press the Government for some satisfactory solution to this situation at the Judicial Review to be held in January 2009, My understanding is that this debacle never should have occurred in the first place had the "Financial Watchdogs" been more effective.

Yours sincerely,

A constituent from Cramlington