Professor Philip Lane:

There are two levels to this. Depending on when a person took a tracker mortgage, whether April 2006, March 2007 or so on, the nature of the paperwork that person would have received from a given lender will differ. There might be what we call a population, which comprises those who took out a mortgage at the same time and have the same paperwork, and the bank might say the paperwork indicates that there is no issue. We say that we think there is an issue. Before starting to open individual files, one notes that these people all have the same contract or set of paperwork, so there is a yes-no decision as to whether people are in or out. That is what we mean by excluded populations, where a bank might be saying that it thinks its reading of the paperwork is that there is no issue. We say to look again at the evidence and that it should be part of what is redressed and compensated. That may include scenarios where people have left one lender for another. The examination is deliberately universal and comprehensive to try to capture every possible case.