Mayoral candidate calls for City to give more

Mayoral candidate calls for City to give more

News

Mayoral candidate Boris Johnson has urged London's booming financial services industry to give back some of the vast sums of money it makes in the City to help the capital’s underprivileged.

He has said the growing divide between the haves and have-nots needs to be tackled, and told reporters that he wanted “to encourage people who are benefiting from London, the world's financial capital, to make colossal sums, to show more awareness of their debt to this city and to give more to those (voluntary social aid) groups.”

His statement echoes that of Chancellor Alistair Darling, who has said that bankers on huge bonuses should think about spreading some of their wealth to help those less well off.

It also reflects the call to the industry made by centre-right think-tank Policy Exchange in its report Give and Let Give: Building a culture of philanthropy in the financial services industry, and reported by Philanthropy UK in December 2007. The report aims to stimulate high-earning City professionals to embark on a philanthropic journey and raise individual giving levels in the UK to match the 1.67% of GDP in the US that goes towards philanthropic projects.

Boris Johnson is the Conservative candidate standing against incumbent Labour mayor Ken Livingstone in elections on 1st May. There are two other candidates for mayor, Sian Berry of the Green Party and former assistant police Chief Brian Paddick, who is standing for the Liberal Democratic Party.