IN 1856 Royal British Bank, a colossal fraud described by this paper as “an extraordinary example of the little trouble the public take to think for themselves,” collapsed. A wave of laws and banking regulations followed its demise. Among them was a bill in 1879 proposing the auditing of banks’ accounts, which contained the radical idea of listing liabilities down one side of the page and assets on the other side.

Another crisis, another set of proposals. On June 19th a committee of MPs and peers delivered a report that aspires to change banking “for good”. It runs considerably longer than the 1879 bill, at about 600 pages, and encompasses a wider range of remedies. Yet its efficacy in preventing future crises and bad behaviour by bankers will probably not be much greater than that of its predecessor.

Its proposals are enormously wide-ranging. The committee suggests jailing reckless bankers and deferring the pay of executives. It takes aim at the tax deductibility of interest payments on debt. It even says banks should be harried to introduce balance to their “overwhelmingly male” trading floors.

These disparate proposals are knit together by the notion that what really failed in the financial crisis was the culture of banking. In the (even longer) Dodd-Frank law, America’s politicians sought to regulate banking in minute detail. By contrast, Britain’s lawmakers are not aiming to interfere with specific markets or activities. They want to make bankers behave better.

The most radical proposal would establish a new criminal offence of “reckless misconduct in the management of a bank.” Given the public’s thirst for bankers’ blood, this is likely to be taken up. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, quickly said that he supported the proposal. It is, however, a troubling law since it tries to impose criminal responsibility on individual bankers for collective failures. Bail-outs and financial crisis notwithstanding, it is also difficult to justify the targeting of an industry with the introduction of banker-specific crimes.

The law is unlikely to lead to the mass jailing of bankers. Prosecutors will struggle to prove recklessness in an industry in which risk-taking is part of the business. “Criminal offences should be reserved for conduct that the people on juries can recognise as criminal,” says Roger Best of Clifford Chance, a law firm.

Indeed, the commission itself seems to hold out little hope that the law will lead to many convictions. It believes, instead, that reckless behaviour might be discouraged. Unfortunately, firms could also think twice about moving people to Britain. Some big banks already avoid doing business with clearing houses and central counterparties based in Germany because doing so could put their executives at risk under German law, which is stricter about prosecuting officials of failed banks.

The commission is more cautious on pay. Instead of taking a populist path and limiting total pay or bonuses it has tried to ensure that compensation encourages good behaviour. Among its ideas are enabling regulators to recover money from the top executives of failed banks and giving them the power to insist that firms defer a portion of pay for up to ten years. Pay consultants are doubtful as to whether this will do much good. Industry veterans, many of whom once worked for partnerships that locked up much of their wealth, believe that it will encourage bankers to think about their firms’ reputations and long-term success rather than their next bonus. Still, such reforms would make London a little less attractive to talent.

If a single flaw led to the crisis it was that bankers were allowed to place asymmetric bets in which they could pocket the gains while passing losses to taxpayers. The commission’s proposals go some way to reducing this asymmetry, although much had already been done through reforms such as the introduction of higher capital standards and the separation of retail and investment banking. Yet, if taken up, they also risk driving business away from London.

Despite their growling, large British banks are not about to up sticks and move: they would face similar headaches elsewhere. Yet banks in global markets can easily choose to place their heads of, say, bond trading in New York, London or Hong Kong. These decisions, each at the margin, can denude a financial centre. British financial regulation since the crisis has sought a balance between keeping its biggest export industry competitive and limiting the risks to taxpayers. This report does not tip the balance. But the criminalisation of risk-taking is an alarming wobble.