MP demands inquiry as high streets face closures
Maverick Grimsby Labour MP Austin Mitchell has demanded an FSA enquiry into credit insurers pulling cover, the Guardian has reported.
The MP, who regularly hounds the FSA and others over financial and accounting regulation, is reported to have written to the FSA’s Paul Miners warning the withdrawal of credit cover would lead to “major closures”.
"If this continues someone is going to go under. Suppliers or traders or both. If the firm going under is a biggie like Woolworths this will knock big holes in every high street across Britain and it's difficult to see those holes being filled in the next disastrous year," he wrote, according to The Guardian.
Mitchell regularly posts his correspondence with Miners on his blog but this letter and this one, not there this morning, may be pasted later.
The move follows concerns that 80% of UK credit insurance comes from just three companies and one of those, Atradius, has cut cover to 12,000 firms.
