FSA executives should be forced to wait several months before taking jobs in the private sector, Norman Lamb MP has argued.
According to a report, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk has written to Gordon Brown asking him to impose "strict cooling-off rules" on FSA executives to avoid any possible conflicts of interest.
It emerged last week that Carol Sergeant, the FSA's managing director of risk and regulatory processes is to join Lloyds TSB as chief risk officer in February. Sergeant is on gardening leave until then.
Lamb said he was not critical of Sergeant's conduct and that she had acted in a "responsible way" by distancing herself from the recent FSA investigation into Lloyd's TSB. But he said there was "a case for some sort of cordon sanitaire to be imposed" at the FSA, said the report.
Lamb pointed out rules for senior civil servants where it is common to have a six-month gap before taking up a job in the private sector.
He warned that a company recruiting a FSA employee could have an interest in learning inside information - either about investigations or rival companies, said the report.
The FSA said it did have arrangements for executives to take "cooling off periods". The length of time varies according to whether the executive was joining one of the companies they used to regulate, concluded the report.
