The Church of England must resist igniting a 1980s-style war of words with the Government over its attacks on the City, according to Ken Costa, a senior banker and church official.
Ken Costa, a former bank chairman and chair of a newly appointed committee at St Paul’s Cathedral, charged with rebuilding links with the financial sector, has warned against a repeat of the bitter row that broke out after the publication of the clergy’s landmark Faith in the City report 25 years ago.
At the time, the report provoked fury among senior Conservatives by levelling some of the blame for economic and spiritual decline at the door of the Thatcher administration.
Mr Costa, the chairman of the St Paul’s Initiative, established by the Cathedral to open up a debate on ethical capitalism, said the clergy’s response to the ongoing protests outside St Paul’s Cathedral must not turn into a “reheated Faith in the City”.
In his first public comments since his appointment, Mr Costa insisted that a flourishing banking sector was “essential to any successful economy” and that financial incentives are “both valid and effective”.
He also said that stiffer regulation of financial services was not necessarily the solution to the global economic crisis, saying, “you cannot regulate into existence a culture of honesty, integrity, truthfulness and responsibility”.
His comments came amid a flurry of attacks on the City from senior members of the Church, after the establishment of the Occupy London protest camp outside St Paul’s.
Last weekend, The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said he believed executive salaries were creating a gulf between rich and poor that made “societies less cohesive”.
Dr Sentamu’s remarks came after the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, threw his weight behind the protesters last week by calling for a new tax on banks.
The report published this week by the St Paul’s Institute also attacked the City, claiming that its reliance on technology is “dehumanising” its values.
Mr Costa, the former chairman of Lazard International, said he agreed that markets seemed to have lost their moral compass, and suggested that maximising shareholder returns should no longer be the “sole criteria” for judging how a company is run.
But, outlining his remit in more detail, he added: “This is no reheated Faith in the City, the 1980s report that so infuriated Baroness Thatcher. It will be an interactive dialogue that will aim to bridge the differences between protesters and the City."
“It will look at how the market has managed to slip its moral moorings, and explore pragmatic ways of uniting the financial and the ethical. And it will be an opportunity for making connections between people and ideas that have come to forget or dismiss one another. It will also ask some penetrating questions about shareholders. Is it still the case that the promotion of shareholder value is the object of all companies?”