Professor Philip Lane:

The second part of the March 2017 report detailed from 2008 onwards how we have been intervening with regard to tracker issues. There is a summary in the annex to my opening statement today. A lot of action was taken between 2008 and 2015. What is true is, to use an American phrase, "whack-a-mole" where one sees a problem here and hits it on the head and sees a problem there and hits it on the head. What we did in 2015 was rather than do it problem by problem, we flipped it to a universal approach. There is a continuous thread of action going back to autumn 2008 when this problem arose. We immediately issued a public warning to the banks that if people were rolling off fixed rates, the banks had better handle that correctly. The fact that our code and warnings that this had to be handled in a pro-consumer and transparent way were so explicit to the banks now allows us to hold them to account because they were warned and they did not do it.

From autumn 2008 onwards, which is when this problem arose in its most acute form, the Central Banks has continuously intervened in the tracker issue. Of course, we can always look back and say "if only we had gone faster, if we had known more", but the Senator should be very mindful that, from 2008, the Central Bank was very acutely aware and tried to do what it could with regard to the tracker problem. Eventually, we moved from treating it on a case-by-case basis to using a universal approach. It is important to make clear that throughout this period, the Central Bank's consumer protection team has been working on this issue.