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Gordon Brown has admitted he made a mistake in not introducing tougher bank regulation when he was chancellor.The prime minister, who was chancellor from 1997 to 2007, said that in the 1990s the banks had all been calling for less regulation.
"And actually the truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more," he said in an interview on ITV1's Tonight.
He said he should have put the "whole public interest" before the banks.
'Complaints'
Mr Brown said he had "learnt" from the experience.
"In the 1990s, the banks, they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation'," said Mr Brown.
"All the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much'. And actually the truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more," he added.
"So I've learnt from that. So you don't listen to the industry when they say, 'This is good for us'. You've got to talk about the whole public interest."
Mr Brown also admitted, as he has done previously, that the decision to scrap the 10 pence rate of tax had been a mistake.
He said: "I've learnt a lot from that, I learn all the time."This article is from the BBC News website. ? British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.