Labour and Co-operative MP for Walthamstow & Co-op Party NEC Member for London
Blog Co-operative development
Co-operative MP Stella Creasy MP reports on the latest news from the campaign she has been leading to end legal loan sharking – and how you can help. 

This week our campaign to end legal loan sharkingwon a significant victory – the Government has announced it is to go back to the drawing board and commission new research as part of its Consumer Credit Review. This is great news as it means they are now reversing their earlier opposition and taking seriously the calls for caps on the total cost of credit which could make a real difference in protecting British consumers who use high cost credit products. You can read the ministerial statement on this here.

I’m asking for your help now to make sure that this research is impartial and independent – In the past there have been real problems with the way research has been done in this area, and we have to make sure these problems don’t re-occur.

Please write to your MP asking them to lobby the Minister responsible, Ed Davey, to ensure that we can all be confident in the outcomes of the research this department commissions. Below is some suggested text to send to your MP and click here for a shortcut to contact your MP.

It’s vital that this research is done fairly, you can help make sure this happens. Please help spread the use and send on this news to friends and family around the country and ask them to help lobby their MP to write as well so that we reach as many MPs as possible.  Together we can end legal loan sharking!

 

Suggested Text for your MP

Dear XXXX

I understand that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is commissioning research looking into the effects of introducing a range of caps on the total cost of credit within the high-cost credit sector.

While I welcome this news as a positive first step towards introducing tighter regulation of high-cost credit, I want to be sure that this research will carried out by an independent body that has no previous connection to this area of policy. This is prompted by well-documented concerns about previous research on introducing interest rate caps in this market. The European Commission recently published an in-depth study which reviewed all such research, and concluded that UK research on this issue was based on “controversial” and “weak” evidence (“Study on Interest Rate Restrictions in the EU”, January 2011, pp269-270).

It is important that these weaknesses are not replicated in the forthcoming research on introducing caps on the total cost of credit. Please write to Ed Davey, the minister for consumer credit, asking him to ensure that the new research is impartial and independent from previous studies so that we can all have confidence in its outcomes.

Yours sincerely,

XXXX