Queen tells party guest that 'banks must change attitude'

The Queen believes banks need to "change their attitude" after causing the recession, according to a guest at a Buckingham Palace garden party.

Amaya Ormazabal, 47, said she and her husband discussed the state of the global economy with the monarch during yesterday's event.

Ms Ormazabal, an IT manager at Lloyd's of London insurance market, said: "We talked about the banks and the Queen said she thought they had a lot to do with it [the recession] and they had to change their attitude.

"My husband's Danish, I'm Spanish, so we talked about where we come from, what we do here and the world situation, all the countries in Europe that have gone through recession and what we can do to change that and hopefully make things get better."

The Queen has frozen all taxpayer-funded pay across the royal household for two years in response to the economic crisis and has decided not to pass on the rise in VAT from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent on items sold in the Royal Collection gift shops.