Here’s how The Guardian reports it:

Liberal Democrat spokesman Lord Oakeshott used parliamentary privilege today to blow a hole in a gag order obtained by Barclays Bank over its tax avoidance scheme. The documents detailing the schemes, previously leaked to the Lib-Dems, were now available on Wikileaks and other websites, he told a Lords debate on tax avoidance.

Barclays had previously obtained a high court injunction banning the Guardian and other papers from disclosing that the documents were publicly available on Wikileaks. The gag order, provided by Mr Justice Blake, also forced the Guardian to remove copies of the documents from

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From Politics Home:

Mr Clegg said that not only should a gagging order preventing the release of documents showing how Barclays help companies avoid tax be lifted immediately, but any bank which has received taxpayer help should stop aiding tax avoidance.

He said it is, “simply intolerable to have taxpayers pass billions through the front for, whilst banks avoid billions in tax through the back door.

Cast your minds back three weeks, and there was much controversy about the financial rewards being received by bankers whose firms had been rescued from bankruptcy by taxpayers. Hmm, how times change. Anyway, it prompted Lib Dem Voice to ask our readers: What do you think should be done about bonuses in those banks recapitalised with taxpayers’ money?

Here’s what you told us:

>> 27% (109) – There should be a government-enforced cap on bonuses
>> 16% (66) – Payment of bonuses should remain at the banks’ discretion …

One thing you absolutely cannot accuse the Lib Dem leadership of – going soft on the pay bonuses for executives at those banks which have been re-capitalised by the government. Here’s Vince Cable, Lib Dem deputy leader:

The Government must freeze all bonus payments for employees of semi-nationalised banks and ensure that the pay details of those earning over £100,000 a year are published.”

And Nick Clegg has also strongly criticised Labour for not taking a tough line, instead suggesting bankers ‘ask themselves whether accepting these payments is the right thing to do’, and setting up a review:

You don’t need a review

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Wall Street bankers in New York are getting much smaller bonuses this year than last year.

That’s a good thing, right?  In view of the financial apocalypse, they deserve less.

Only thing is, New York City and New York State made a lot of money out of taxing those bonuses, and between them they are looking at over $1bn less money to spend on everything that city and state government needed to pay for. 

It’s a tough time for local government cuts.

Late last week, there was a small flurry of media interest in hedge fund Lansdowne Partners:

A hedge fund run by two Tory donors made a £12million killing in days by exploiting the collapse of Barclays shares, it was revealed yesterday. Financiers Paul Ruddock and David Craigen have donated more than £300,000 to the party, most of it since David Cameron became leader. Within hours of the ban on the controversial practice of short-selling being lifted last Friday, their company Lansdowne Partners sold shares in Barclays worth £28.4million. They were bought back on Wednesday, by which time the bank’s value

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After last week’s pretty subdued start to the new Parliamentary term at Prime Minister’s Questions, there was a return to the more boisterous rough ‘n’ tumble which passes for debate in this farcical weekly charade in the interests of holding the Government publicly to account.

As is well-established, the actual content of PMQs is pretty irrelevant (which is just as well, because it’s pretty non-existent) – for the media and the Westminster village performance is all. And measured by that criterion, I thought all three party leaders could take some pleasure in how they did.

As recession reality begins to hit home, the Government’s response to it was, unsurprisingly, the dominant theme. Gordon Brown tried to slam home two messages: that Labour is doing all it can; and that the Tories would do nothing. And for once he managed to upstage Mr Cameron with a couple of slick, well-delivered one-liners:

The one thing that President Obama did not say in his speech yesterday was, “Fellow Americans, let’s do nothing.”

and, gesturing to Ken Clarke, restored to the Tory front-bench:

[the Leader of the Opposition] has the benefit now of a new shadow shadow Chancellor to help him on his way

Though that did set up Mr Cameron’s best-scripted line of the day: “The difference between this former Chancellor [Mr Clarke] and that former Chancellor [Mr Brown] is that this one left a golden legacy and that one wrecked it.”

But, for me, the Prime Minister’s most impressive answer was not the rehearsed bon mots, but his graceful acknowledgement that the Government’s recapitalisation of the banks is in trouble, but that it was the best, the only, policy on the table, and it was (eventually) supported (half-heartedly) by the Tories themselves:

I was very grateful for the support that the Opposition party gave to the recapitalisation of the banks three months ago. I suppose that I should not be surprised that the minute there is a difficulty, it withdraws its support from the right proposal. The recapitalisation of the banks was the right thing to do. The right hon. Gentleman has no other policy that would replace that policy.

To my ears, the phraseology sounded very Tony Blair. Why? Because its more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone is just the right way to deflate Mr Cameron’s tendency towards shrill point-scoring. It also has the merit of being the truth, a powerful weapon which Mr Brown all too often neglects.

In his two allotted questions, Nick Clegg pressed two issues – first, that the Government’s response is too ambiguous to work, and secondly that it’s time for full, temporary nationalisation of the weakest banks.

To be honest, I didn’t think this was one of Nick’s best days at PMQs (although generally I think he’s a strong performer there, unfairly maligned by media hacks). To me, his questions seemed a little vague, with no examples to back them up. However, I’ve heard Nick’s sound-bite-ettes used on a number of news programmes this afternoon, while the PMQs questions he asks which I do like seem to sink without trace as far as the media’s concerned. And though I suspect this says at least as much about the poor quality of political reporting as it does about my judgement, I’m happy to concede that, in this instance at least, what matters is what works.

You can catch up with the video of PMQs here via the BBC website, the audio here via the Guardian, or read the Hansard transcript of Nick’s exchanges below:

Over at The Times, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable explains that the second bailout shows that the Labour Government has acted as imprudently as the banks themselves. You can read it in full here – and I recommend that you do – but here’s an excerpt in case you need any further tantalising:

It is clear that the conditions set by the Government over the original capitalisation was a sham. No effective monitoring and controls were put in place to ensure that the money went where it was intended. The banks do not even seem to have been required

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