When are the bankers going to be punished for their failure?

[Sysman]

You haven't been paying attention in recent years. The idea that evasion is breaking the law, but avoidance is legitimately structuring your affairs so as to pay less tax legally; and so evasion is a crime but avoidance is acceptable, has been out the window for years. Avoidance is now classed as wrong, because it leads to HMRC not receiving as much tax as they expected (those are their exact words). It is now pursued too. Actions which are technically legal but are deemed by HMRC to be not what parliament intended when it drafted the law (again, their exact words), will be treated as being wrong and will be pursued aggressively.

The thing is that what parliament actually did intend in many (most? all?) cases was to encourage investment in a particular area and created tax advantages to do so.