What do you want Martin to ask Mark Hoban, Treasury Minister?

tiredolddave

The issue of unfair bank charges seems to have been swept under the carpet.:mad: My daughter is being pursued for a debt to the Halifax bank which is made up almost entirely of bank charges incurred before the Supreme Court decided against the High Court and everybody with any sense of fairness that these charge were legal and before the banks proved it by reducing the charges themselves to a less unreasonable level. At the risk of being arrested for contempt of court, does the Minister consider that members of the Supreme Court may have a conflict of interest?

Alantheaged

Our private pension schemes used to be the best in the world. Following Gordon Brown deliberately and destructively taking away the tax break as a major cause of their demise, and the resulting and recognised growing crisis in pensions in the private sector, can the government now look to restoring the tax break to allow the pensions industry/private companies to begin to rebuild what we once had. The cost to the treasury must be very low as there are currently so few schemes available and it would go a long way to relieving the considerable problems now building up to a future time bomb due to the poor private sector pensions. To me it would be a win/win/win and also begin to assist the government in re-establishing some trust from the electorate in showing that they are actually on our side rather than continuing with the dogmatic anti private sector destructiveness of the previous government.

advice_for_life

With all the bad news in the community and the banks having bad publicity on their service, The only good news is Credit Unions. It is time for people to choose and use a fair saving and lending financial cooperative and share in the profits rather than continue supporting FAT CATS, Open your savings account now and invest in your local community please,:j

sugarsian wrote: »

What is Mark Hoban going to do about sub-prime lenders who prey on vulnerable and desperate people. More of whom are getting into debt in the financial crisis. They ramp up charges, add compound interest, rush to litigate, add litigation charges add more compound interest making these loans truly the Never Never. The interest rates are extortionate. People are stuck in these pernicious loan agreements with no chance of ever getting out of them. Often consumers have a strong possibility of losing their house over a £10k loan - it's disgusting.

doinright

more help please for buyers to get a mortgage not just for 'new build' Giving incentives to buyers to buy new build housing isnt going to get the market moving. There are a lot of people out there can afford a mortgage but not the huge deposit. More of the schemes such as 'Homebuy' would help. Also this needs to be promoted more. A lot of people dont know about it or are not sure how it works. Perhaps you can help there Martin

Radiantsoul

I would like to know what steps are being taken to ensure a cross party consensus on pensions. A major issue seems to be that under the UK constitution no government can bar a future government for making changes. An example might be the move from RPI to CPI(with no value judgement on my part as to whether this is right or wrong). It is equally possible that future governments might (as an example)impose requirements on what pension funds can hold as investments.

So in the case of long term savings/investments probably the only way forwards is for all major political parties to have agreement in principle as to how pensions will work. This could be a form of agreement that might be renegotiated every five or ten years and establish principles on a relatively abstract basis. Examples might be what government, individuals and companies are expected to contribute, what kinds of assets a pension fund can hold, disclosure requirements, and tax policy.

angie2404

Having been told to refund PPI, why are the banks not contacting the customers, and why is it taking so long to get claims sorted.

The FOS are now inundated with complaints and so are not able to offer any short term solution. I have two claims with the same bank ongoing since August 2010, I just keep receiving the same letter every month.

Whilst a different claim with a different bank has been settled within 2 months.

foolishsaver

It is pretty iniquitous that having already paid tax on earnings, if we then save any of what's left we get taxed on that, too - despite receiving a measly rate of interest of about 1/2 of the current inflation rate...and then we lose entitlement to benefits as well! My specific question is about Pension Credit - the Guarantee Credit part that tops up your weekly income to a guaranteed minimum if you are over 60 but before you get a state pension. This benefit is discounted by your income from savings, which is judged to be £1 per week for every £500 of savings held (i.e. nearly 11% p.a.). Despite assiduously reading Martin's weekly emails I am unable to get a rate much over 3%. Could the Minister please tell me where I can get a rate of 11% on my savings, so that I can retire happily rather than keep searching for non-existent jobs? Or alternatively could he help make the system fairer to those of limited means who have made the mistake of saving by getting the discount rate more in line with real life?

sovietski

Why are pensioners footing the blame for the actions of international bankers and speculators? Those that have been prudent and saved a nest egg for retirement have suffered over two years of insulting rates of interest on their savings with the BOE base rate glued at 0.5%.
Will pensioners ever get back the lost interest that they have been robbed of?
Why should working people bother to save for their retirement years with such an insulting return on savings from the banks?

With the cost of food and fuel rocketing, we now find that our civil service pensions are also under attack by linking future rises to the CPI instead of the RPI which used to be the case. Why is this spiteful added misery being lumped on already hard pressed pensioners.

Why is the IMF banging on the door of small countries in Europe like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and most recently Italy, when America that caused the problems with the collapse of Lehman Brothers bank and the sub prime mortgage fiasco of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are getting off Scot free.

The American debt dwarfs those of of all the European countries put together and has nearly reached $14 trillion dollars which is approaching 100% of their GDP, and so why does the IMF not demand that they put their house in order?

It is as if America was playing a big game of chess with other economies around the world, but because they suddenly realised that they were in danger of losing the game, suddenly up ended the board. They saw China, Russia, India, and other nations booming whilst their own economy was clapped out, and it would seem that the credit crunch was a deliberate act.

It is America that has been living beyond its means, with weaponry, loans from China, and a massive social security debt for all the jobless there. Gordon Brown was the only one to have the guts to come out and put the blame squarely where it lies,namely with the actions of the US.

I would like to know why America gets away with the trouble that they created. Are other nations afraid of them?:money::mad:

MillsMotsMo

Why are such a large Bank (Barlcays-FirstPlus) allowed to charge 12.6% interest rates on a mortgage, allow them to repossess homes because no one can afford to pay these rates, or stop home owners from trying to sell their homes so that they are repossessed and loss to BFP can be written off against tax? Why are BFP not exposed and forced to retrospectively refund customers or pay damages to customers in respect to deceit (see OFT reprimand)in their second charge lending code as is the case imposed on Swift (finance)? Why are we as customers not protected by OFT and FOS enough, FBP wont allow customers to remortgage elsewhere, they impose settlement figures of around £15000. Why is the government,who have been written to by many customers, not asking for an immediate investiagtion into FBP practises.

Ripoff_2

Please ask the Minister: How can it be fair, justified or morally right to have two different pension inflation indexes in the same pension scheme, or for that matter between different pension schemes now the government has reduced the statutory minimum uprating from RPI to CPI. This gives some pensioners an increase at the lesser CPI inflation index, that were indexing before the change at RPI but others pensioners that increase at the higher RPI inflation index, inflation for pensioners is inflation and ALL should be at RPI.

As an example. BT pensions have a section B that is now paying CPI and Section C that is paying RPI increases. The change in April caused Section B pensioners to have an inflation increase of 3.1% while Section C had an increase by 4.8%. Bearing in mind that both section members paid in 6% of their wages and both sections are very similar apart from section C increases are capped at 5%. The only reason for this was that Section B is linked to the Governments statutory indexing and Section C actually says RPI in the rules. BT and the Trustees directly blame the Government for this obscene anomaly and say there is nothing they can do.

To make the concept really simple to understand I have given the following scenario.

If as a Section B pensioner I buy a tin of beans that have risen by 4% over the year, but I am only now getting a 3.1% increase to cover the inflation cost of those beans, then I would not be able to afford the beans. A Section C pensioner who buys exactly the same tin of beans but gets their inflation costs increased by 4.8% can still afford the beans. So why is my inflation rate for the same tin of beans not exactly the same as the section C member, the beans have risen for both of us by exactly the same amount?

The inflation measure should be the same measure for ALL pensioners and RPI should be restored forthwith.