SIR – Is it not barefaced cheek for David Blundell and the Bradford and Bingley Shareholder Action Group (T&A Business, December 18) to demand compensation because the Government was forced by circumstances to take control? As part owners, Mr Blundell and the other members of his group should have started asking questions on April 4, 2006, the day B&B shares began their irreversible decline.

They didn’t, so it was allowed to carry on with its ultimately disastrous strategy of using the wholesale money markets to fund the bulk of its lending. But just two years later the ‘credit crunch’ left their company desperately short of working capital and, with collapse imminent, the only option was to seek Government help.

Savers’ accounts went to Santander and the institutions funding the mortgage book were given a Treasury guarantee which persuaded them not to call in their loans.

This ‘rescue’ left Bradford and Bingley effectively bankrupt but kept its core businesses afloat. It seems perverse that disgruntled shareholders should expect we the taxpayers to pay them for the privilege of doing what they should have done some two years earlier.

Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley