It allowed depositors to choose where their money would be invested and set their own interest rates from zero to 7 per cent.It will not be the first time, though, that Mr Odgers has put his beliefs into action. As far back as 1974, Mercury Provident, now merged with Holland’s Triodos Bank, was set up to finance ethical projects. CITY financier James Odgers has taken the words of God in Exodus, 22:25 to heart: “If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer.”

After two decades in the Square Mile, most recently as a founding director of the Intermediate Capital Group, Mr Odgers has finished with its godless ways and responded to a higher calling, the establishment of a Christian bank.
In doing so, he hopes to take finance back to its roots in Biblical days, when it was a way for members of small communities to help each other and the main form of security was trust.Mr Odgers’ Christian bank will not be the first set up for good causes in Britain. The graph on the left shows unemployment rates for Europe, a sad familiar story. The graph on the right shows participation rates, the proportion of people who are in the labour force.

This is largely driven by social considerations – Scandinavians tend to have high rates while Mediterraneans low – but it is interesting to see that the UK is successful at generating some sort of employment for a workforce which is relatively large in proportion to the population Not a triumph; but not a disaster either.. So there is a powerful case for up-skilling right across the board.But that is not enough. Clearly, people who are left behind will need some kind of compensation and that requires government intervention. While the apocalyptic stories about rising mass unemployment are wrong there is no doubt that we are heading into uncharted territory, for the IT revolution will force changes in the way in which we work which at the moment we can only glimpse.

At any rate, expect more on this in the future: the OECD is preparing a report on indicators of performance in knowledge-based industries which should be published in the summer.Meanwhile, though the Lille summit will concentrate on unemployment and it is those figures which hit the headlines, note that there is another indicator which is arguably more important: employment. The gist of it is that the benefits of increasing skill levels in terms of job creation are far greater than the costs, for while higher-skilled people increase productivity and so companies may need fewer workers, new and expanding industries have an over-riding demand for highly-skilled people.Interestingly, other work at the OECD shows that it is not just the high- tech industries that need high-skill workers Even low-tech industries need them too. Its report – Technology, Productivity and Job Creation – will be published later this week and presented to the summit at the weekend. Indeed it would be logical to provide the night-time stint from somewhere in another time zone; and that could be India, which has already become an important software exporter. Our real job protection must be based on improving our education and skills and competing that way.That leads to the second point: to what extent might better technology, better education, better training and the higher productivity that these bring be a threat, rather than a boost, to jobs?This is an issue which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has been working on for the last two years, as it was asked to do so at that Detroit summit. Of course some services will never be traded internationally – you cannot eat a meal across the airwaves – but a lot of the services which at present are still carried out in the country where they are bought, may come to be carried out abroad in future.For example, if banking and insurance become largely provided by phone, as with First Direct and Direct Line, there is no need for the administrative back-up in Britain.

Professor Freeman’s long- term solution is to get out of sectors of industry where we do have to compete with China and India.It is a good response to protectionism, but I would have one reservation. While at the moment the principal challenge to the West comes in visible trade, in future we will face competition in services. As telecommunications costs come down and as an increasing amount of trade is on-screen services, anyone who has computer skills can deliver those anywhere in the world. Most of our low-skilled jobs are not in manufacturing where we are vulnerable to imports, but in services which are not internationally traded. So while our low-skilled workers in industry may indeed be displaced, we will still be able to create jobs in the public sector and, I suppose, fast-food restaurants.