Matthew Taylor backs campaign to refund penalty bank charges

9.42.26pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 23rd May 2006

Matthew Taylor, together with his fellow Liberal Democrat MPs in Cornwall, is backing a campaign to force banks to refund billions of pounds taken unlawfully from their customers' accounts.

When a customer is late paying a credit card bill or makes a mistake on their current account by exceeding their overdraft limit or has a cheque or direct debit returned unpaid, the bank imposes a penalty charge that can be as high as £35 for each mistake. These charges often have a snowball effect on customers, particularly the less well off, and within a matter of months, customers can find that they have been charged hundreds of pounds in penalty charges.

A voluntary consumer group, www.bankchargeshell.co.uk has been campaigning against these charges for over a year arguing that these charges are legally unenforceable. The group has helped individuals to sue their banks for recovery of these charges and every bank that has been sued has backed down and refunded the charges.

In early April, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) issued a statement saying that it has concluded that these charges are unlawful and has told the banks to reduce their charges. But the OFT has done nothing about getting banks to refund the charges that they have taken from the customers' accounts for many years.

The Cornish Lib Dem MPs are pressing the OFT to do more to help customers recover their money. Meanwhile, the MPs are advising anyone who has suffered from these charges to seek help and advice from consumer groups such as www.bankchargeshell.co.uk who will tell them how they can recover the money from their banks.

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See latest about MPs writing to OFT.