Consumers need a central register where they can check the qualifications of financial advisers and be sure the claims made are correct rather than invented.
The obvious place to go was the regulator. Yet it did not seem to occur to a single senior member of staff that in the internet age they should provide this service.
Nor did it occur to them that consumers might believe that the FCA register would provide an impeccable source of information.
Instead it allowed the list to become a shop window for cheats and liars. Consumers could not tell a top-qualified adviser from a charlatan.
Far frombeing a gamekeeper, the FCA was providing assistance to the poachers. It is finally planning to improve the search facility.
Its target must be to make certain that all entries on the register are accurate. It is a publisher of this information and its readers should be able to trust it as a reliable source.
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So, Peter Hargreaves has invested £24m in Goonhilly Earth Station – a satellite facility in Cornwall. Goonhilly recently signed an £8.4m contract with the European Space Agency to become the first private operator in the Deep Space Communications network.
But perhaps more significantly, it is also working on plans to put a satellite in the moon’s orbit.
Could it be that Hargreaves is planning a spectacular escape in the event of a Corbyn government?
Tony Hazell writes for the Daily Mail's Money Mail section
