Many local groups in North Edinburgh have over the years benefited from grants from the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland. The foundation for Scotland gives grants to charities including some which work with some of the most vulnerable people in our society. It is an independent body which receives 1% of the pre-tax profits from the Lloyds Banking Group.
 
With the banking crisis profits have dried up and the Foundation has had to shut its doors to new applications at just the time that need is greatest. Often the charities it funds are much smaller than an organisation like Macmillan but I know from my surgeries just how important their work is. They are often run on a shoestring so they are understandably anxious about their futures now.
 
The Banking Group has offered short-term help but is insisting that the percentage of its profits that go to the foundation be cut to 0.5% and a director of the bank be appointed to the Foundation’s governing board so that the bank can have a say in where the money goes.
 
The beauty of the Foundation is that, aside from providing vital funds, it also looks at how the charity works to try and improve it. They should be efficiently run of course but the needs of the vulnerable people they are helping should be paramount not those of the bank. I am really glad to see that the Foundation is determined to remain independent and is refusing to accept the proposals.
 
Lloyds -TSB has received £8.5 billion in Government support and I have written to Alastair Darling asking him to intervene. The TSB actually started out in Dumfries as a kind of credit union to help local workers paid a pittance to save as much as they were able. It’s time that it remembered its origins and extended the same generosity to those who depend on the foundation that the TSB received from taxpayers when it hit trouble itself.