Nigel Farage debanking row: NatWest chairman under pressure after BBC apology

Pressure is mounting on NatWest to reveal whether its chief executive played a role in leaking private information about Nigel Farage.

Dame Alison Rose’s career is “hanging in the balance”, said The Daily Telegraph, after the BBC apologised on Monday for an inaccurate story that claimed Coutts, which is owned by NatWest, shut down Farage’s bank accounts because he did not meet its financial requirements.

The former Ukip leader subsequently obtained a 40-page report from Coutts indicating that his account was closed because it had found his public statements did “not align with our values”.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

On 4 July the BBC published the story by its business editor, Simon Jack, who claimed it came from “a trusted and senior source”. However, apologising on Twitter, he said “the information turned out to be incomplete and inaccurate”.

Having secured and accepted an apology from the BBC, Farage has “sought to put pressure back on NatWest” and challenged the bank’s leadership to investigate how his private financial information became public, reported The Independent.

“This now goes right back to the Natwest Banking Group,” he said. “Someone in that group decided it was appropriate, legal and ethical to leak details of my personal financial situation. That, I think, is wrong on every level – and that is where the spotlight should be and it will.”

That spotlight has now landed on Dame Alison Rose, who The Telegraph reported sat next to Simon Jack at a charity dinner in London the night before the article was published. The NatWest chief executive has already issued an apology to Farage for the “deeply inappropriate comments” about him in the report.

Farage has demanded that NatWest’s chairman, Sir Howard Davies, launches a board-level inquiry to determine who leaked his information to the BBC.

It comes as the Financial Times reported the Treasury will this week summon the heads of Britain’s biggest banks to explain how they intend to ensure that customers are not “de-banked” for their political views.