Professor Philip Lane:

Again, we think more would be paid to more people using our strategy because much of the harm happened before 2013. If we used the power to zero in on the harm from 2013 onwards, it would be a legal process between us and the banks. I agree that is preferable to forcing individuals to take cases. We are not yet at that point. The banks are currently reviewing the excluded cohorts and this is the back-and-forth happening now.

The banks are saying that they have legal advice to the effect that they can win a court case on this, but we are responding that we believe this is so ambiguous that there is a lack of preference for the consumer case that it would be much better if they accepted that these people should receive redress and compensation. If the banks continue to point to their legal advice and we to our legal view, the result will be a legal conflict which would delay a lot of payments and would only address harm from 2013 onwards. I appreciate that there is a lot of frustration around this but I would like to point to the following. First, in the case of various lenders, a lot is being paid out now relating to the whole duration of the damage and not only post-2013. This is a success of the examination. Second, we are pushing back. With the pushback there has been a lot of movement over the course of the year in various cases. It is true to say that more remains to be done. We do reserve the option of taking cases to the ombudsman and the courts. As there is no longer a time limit on the harm, it means that the pre-2013 losses will be subject to rectification and compensation by the ombudsman. That is very important. Our strategy is to look at the lifetime of the damage, not just 2013 onwards. If we focus only on 2013 onwards, in most cases not enough would be paid out. Our aim is to maximise the protection for consumers.