When George Osborne, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, set up the Independent Commission on Banking last May, it must have seemed a clever political ruse: the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had made all sorts of wild pronouncements in opposition about how they would reform the banking sector. Once in coalition and unable to agree a way forward, it seemed to make sense to kick the issue into the long grass by appointing a panel of grandees to spend a year considering the issues.

But as the UK waits with bated breath for ICB chairman Sir John Vickers to deliver his interim report on April 11, there is a risk that establishing this commission will turn out to be not only bad politics but worse economics.