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The UK’s biggest banks are bracing themselves for defeat in the High Court test case about overdraft charges.Mr Justice Andrew Smith will hand down his judgement later on whether or not the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) can rule that bank charges are unfair.

If the OFT wins, it is then expected to decide that bank charges are too high.

Since the beginning of 2006 hundreds of thousands of bank customers have tried to reclaim their charges on the grounds that they were too high and unfair.

Test case

Both the banks and the courts were deluged with claims which they were finding very difficult to deal with.

But since both sides agreed to stage the test case, tens of thousands of claims have been put on hold in either the county courts or with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

It is important to note that the test case will not decide whether overdraft charges are fair or not

Consumers’ association, Which?
Q&A: Bank charges
Analysis: Test case
Why I took my bank to court

“A decision in favour of customers would be massively significant,” said Marc Gander of the Consumer Action Group.

“Public confidence in the banking system is at an all-time low,” he added.

The BBC has estimated that last year the banks refunded about £784m to nearly 378,000 customers.

‘Snowballing situation’

Paul Tilley, a law student from Southampton, was one of those customers.

He says he won back £4,000 including interest after his bank imposed charges for exceeding his overdraft limit.

He has an outstanding claim with another bank and hopes the test case will force banks to change their behaviour.

“Looking at my statements from the time, they were taking up to £180 a month off me in charges, it then left me short for paying my bills.”

“As a result my payments bounced, I then went over my overdraft again.”

“It was a snowballing situation.”

Outcomes

The OFT first agreed last July, with seven banks and the Nationwide building society, to stage the test case to decide if it had the power under consumer contract regulations to regulate overdraft charges.

The issue of the OFT’s jurisdiction was then thrashed out during 14 days of complicated High Court hearings in January and February.

The consumers association Which? said there would be three possible outcomes to Thursday’s judgement.
An outright win for the OFT. The court could rule that all terms and conditions for all the test case banks over the last 6 years can be assessed for fairness.

An outright win for the banks. The court could rule that none of the terms and conditions used by any of the test case banks over the last 6 years can be assessed for fairness.

Something in between. The court might decide that some terms and conditions are subject to fairness assessment, while others are not.
“It is important to note that the test case will not decide whether overdraft charges are fair or not,” said Which?

Further hearings?

Further High Court hearings after Thursday’s judgement to decide the exact level of charges, could lead to further delays for hundreds of thousands of claimants.

One senior banker involved in the proceedings told the BBC: “We are preparing for every possibility.”

But he argued that an initial defeat on the issue of the OFT’s jurisdiction would simply lead to a second round of cases on the precise nature of the “fairness”, or otherwise, of bank charges.

And that would be separate from any possible appeal hearing against the first judgement.

Describing subsequent hearings as “substantial” and likely to go on into next year, he said “we have agreed to act with all speed”.

Free banking

As well as deciding the narrow legal issue of jurisdiction, Mr Justice Andrew Smith and the various parties to the hearing will have important consequential issues to decide.
Will his ruling affect the banks’ historic terms and conditions as well as their current ones?

What guidance should be given to county court judges and the Financial Ombudsman Service about the backlog of cases that have been kept on hold?

Should the Financial Services Authority lift its “waiver” which has let banks keep new claims on hold?
At stake is not only the ability of aggrieved customers to reclaim their charges but also the ability of the banks to generate an estimated £3.5bn a year in profits from levying them.

If the banks eventually suffer a complete defeat on the issue, then it has been widely predicted that they will try to recoup their losses by abandoning the long standing policy of so-called “free banking” for customers in credit.

Instead, monthly or annual charges could be introduced as standard for running an ordinary current account
Source:

Police are continuing to question two men on suspicion of murdering a severely disabled 22-year-old man.

Missing James Hughes’ mother Heather Wardle was found with a ligature around her neck at the base of a tree in undergrowth near her home on Monday.

The men were arrested after a body was found at a house in Redditch, Worcestershire, on Wednesday.

A police cordon has been put up around part of Loxley Close, Church Hill - near to Ms Wardle’s home.

A white tent has also been erected by police in the back garden of one of the houses.

A white tent has been erected outside one of the houses

The two arrested men are being questioned at police stations in Kidderminster and Redditch, West Mercia Police said.

Police said a post-mortem examination was being carried out to establish the cause of death.

Detectives had been trying to establish the last sighting of Mr Hughes, who had a mental age of 18 months and needed 24-hour care.

They believe his 39-year-old mother died within 24 hours of going missing on Friday evening, when she had said she was going to visit a friend but never arrived.

Ms Wardle’s partner, Brian Kirby, paid tribute to her as a “brilliant mother” who doted on her children.

He said he was “devastated” to learn of her death and described her as a chatty, bubbly person who was full of character and got on well with neighbours and his family.

He said she was a brilliant mother to Mr Hughes and her other children, Daniel, 17, Callum, eight and six-year-old Luke
Source:

The first national teachers’ strike for two decades is set to disrupt a third of schools in England and Wales.

A survey of 140 local authorities shows that at least 8,000 schools will be closed or partially closed.

Rallies will be held by the National Union of Teachers around the country, as members demand a 4.1% pay increase rather than the 2.45% on offer.

Schools Minister Jim Knight says parents will be “frustrated and inconvenienced” by the strike.

This one-day strike is the opening move in what the teachers’ union says will be a long-term campaign over pay.

Widespread disruption

Local authorities have been warning parents about disruption - and a survey of eight out of 10 councils showed that 33% of schools are expected to be affected. This could mean lost lessons in schools teaching more than 2.5 million pupils.

TEACHERS’ PAY
£20,133 - starting salary (England and Wales)
£34,281 - most experienced teachers’ salary (outside London)
+£4,000 - additional pay for inner London teachers
£39,525 - headteachers’ starting salary
Nearly £100,00 - most experienced headteachers’ salary

According to the Local Government Association, about half of the disrupted schools will be closed entirely to pupils - with the others closed for individual classes or year groups.

The numbers of schools facing closure or loss of lessons rose sharply in the 24 hours before the strike. In Birmingham, the number almost doubled to 138 schools.

Widespread disruption is also expected to schools in Leeds, Manchester, Cumbria, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire and inner London. But many other schools will be unaffected - as the strike is only being staged by the NUT without the support of other teachers’ unions.

The NUT is protesting against a pay deal that they say represents an erosion of earnings. Teachers have been offered a three-year deal worth 2.45% this year and then increases of 2.3% in the following years.

“What we’re saying to the government is, if you really do value teachers, then make sure that they’re paid at least at the level of inflation - which we take to be the RPI, which is 4.1%,” says the union’s acting head, Christine Blower.

Pay battle

The teachers’ union leader says that school staff must not be forced to pay the price in lower earnings for pressures on public sector pay.

But the government rejects the complaint - arguing that parents will not be sympathetic.

TEACHERS’ STRIKE

Schools so far facing disruption
Thousands in civil service strike

“I think parents are bewildered because they hear that the average teacher earns about £34,000,” said Schools Minister Jim Knight.

“Their pay has gone up by 19% in real terms since 1997 and that at 2.45% they’re getting more than the 2% benchmark for public sector pay last year and that it’s a reasonable deal.

“The three-year pay award was a recommendation of an independent pay review body… we can’t re-open that process,” said the schools minister. Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb condemned the timing of the strike, when “many children have important exams coming up soon and can’t afford to miss crucial lessons”.

Teachers should have a no-strike agreement, argued the Liberal Democrat school spokesman, David Laws.

Source:

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is asking shareholders for an extra £12bn as the bank seeks to shore up its finances.

The rights issue was announced as part of a trading update and is one of the largest seen in UK corporate history.

The firm also announced a write-down of £5.9bn before tax, following its exposure to the credit markets.

RBS added that it was reviewing its insurance unit, which could lead to the sale of its Churchill Insurance and Direct Line businesses.

Market conditions

RBS, which played a leading role in last year’s takeover of the Dutch bank ABN Amro, said it needed to increase its cash base and a rights issue was the best option.

WHAT IS A RIGHTS ISSUE?
Companies issue extra shares to raise money
They are offered to existing shareholders, usually at a discount to the current share price
Shares are offered in proportion to existing holdings, so if you own 10% of the old shares you are offered 10% of the new ones

Under the terms of the rights issue, 11 new shares will be issued for every existing 18 shares at 200 pence each.

The bank said the extra money was needed in light of “severe and increasing deterioration in credit market conditions, the worsening economic outlook and the increased likelihood that credit markets would remain difficult for some time”.

In its latest update, which covered the period from 31 December to 22 April 2008, RBS said global banking and markets had been “acutely affected by credit market conditions” especially in March.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said that the bank would “retain more capital in its balance sheet to meet the risks of default by borrowers than it had been doing”.

RBS said that, following its integration with ABN, it aimed to cut staff numbers by more than originally planned, and added it was seeking to cut costs by 2.3bn euros, up from an earlier estimate of 1.7bn euros
Source:

Chancellor Alistair Darling and Housing Minister Caroline Flint are to meet mortgage lenders later to urge them to do more to help struggling borrowers.Mr Darling will ask the industry to find ways to prevent those in trouble from having their homes repossessed.

It follows his backing of a £50bn Bank of England plan to allow banks to swap mortgage debts for government bonds to help them during the credit crunch.

The global squeeze has made mortgages harder to find and more expensive.

The rate at which banks lend to each other has been rising, which has seen banks toughening up their lending terms even though official UK interest rates are falling.

There is particular concern about homeowners coming to the end of cheap fixed-rate deals.

Many of them will face much higher monthly bills at a time when food and fuel costs are already stretching household incomes.

Figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders last month showed the number of people whose homes were repossessed last year in the UK rose by 21% - the highest for eight years.

Swap scheme

But after the announcement of the multi-billion-pound scheme to help banks with their liquidity problems on Monday, it is thought the chancellor may now feel it is time for lenders to pass that assistance on to customers.

In a statement to MPs, Mr Darling said the Bank’s intervention was necessary because money markets were not “functioning properly” and were beset by a “lack of confidence” despite billions of pounds in liquidity being pumped into the system.

The measures, he said, would help alleviate the “increasing cost and declining availability of lending by banks and building societies”.

Under the plan, banks will be allowed to swap mortgage debts for government securities.

The swap scheme, starting on Monday, will be for a period of one year and may be renewed for a total of three years.

It will only apply to mortgage debts on banks’ books at the end of 2007 and the swaps cannot be used to finance new lending.

‘Improved liquidity’

Michael Coogan, the director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which will be attending the meeting with the chancellor on Tuesday, welcomed the Bank of England’s move and said it would help with two things.

“Firstly, improve liquidity in the market, but that may mean more than £50bn over time.

“Secondly, and importantly, restoring confidence in financial markets, which I hope will bring down the cost of the London Interbank Rate, which affects most consumers,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight.

British banks have become increasingly unwilling to make loans, even to each other, as a result of the credit crisis, which was triggered by massive losses for banks involved in the US sub-prime mortgage market.

And many investors, concerned at what happened to sub-prime mortgages in the US, no longer want UK mortgage-based assets.

The disappearance of this market has deprived banks of tens of billions of pounds of finance for mortgage lending
Source:

BAA’s ownership of seven UK airports “may not be serving well the interests of either airlines or passengers”, the Competition Commission has said.

The commission’s “emerging thinking” report said that BAA, “dominates the airports markets in the south-east of England and in lowland Scotland”.

Its next report in August may call on BAA to sell one or more airports.

BAA owns Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Southampton and Aberdeen airports.

‘Lack of responsiveness’

BAA is itself owned by the Spanish company Ferrovial.

The Competition Commission stressed that it had not yet reached any conclusions but added that it would set out its remedies to any competition problems in August, “whether requiring the sale of one or more of BAA’s airports or otherwise”.

“We are particularly concerned by its (BAA’s) apparent lack of responsiveness to the differing needs of its airline customers, and hence passengers,” said Christopher Clarke, chairman of the BAA airports inquiry.

Mr Clarke was also worried that having so many airports owned by BAA meant that big development projects were being carried out one at a time.

Airport capacity

He added that the point of giving BAA ownership of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted after privatisation in 1987 was to make sure there would be adequate airport capacity in the south-east of England, but that there was still a shortage of capacity.

The regulator conceded that competition in the south-east of England was unlikely in the short term because of the lack of capacity, but suggested that having airports separately owned could help to encourage growth in capacity.

It also said that there was potential for competition between Heathrow and Gatwick airports and Southampton.

In Scotland, the report said there was potential for competition between Edinburgh and Glasgow airports, although the ownership of Aberdeen airport was less of an issue.
Source:

The number of suspected child sex offenders arrested in the UK has risen threefold in the past year, says the organisation set up to tackle abuse.

Nearly 300 suspects were arrested and 131 children protected after work by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).

Ceop, set up as part of UK police in 2006, says it helped break up six international paedophile networks.

It said it had also located 25 of the UK’s highest risk child sex offenders.

The most high profile of these is Timothy Cox, who was convicted in June last year of running a child abuse network from his bedroom at a farmhouse in Buxhall, Suffolk.

More than 75,000 indecent and explicit images were found on Cox’s computer from which he had supplied more than 11,000 to other site users via a website he called “Kids the Light of Our Lives”.

Ceop was set up in April 2006 to help track some of the UK’s highest risk sex offenders and protect children from sexual abuse.

By us all working together 131 children are now safeguarded from some of the worst abuse imaginable

Jim Gamble, Chief Executive, Ceop

Based in London, it works by bringing law enforcers in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia together with the information technology industry, as well as charities and schools.

During the last year Ceop has uncovered around a million images of child sex abuse. It studies each image to help build up intelligence, track offenders, or use as vital parts of an investigative jigsaw.

Eighteen young victims have been identified as a result of this jigsaw work alone.

Nearly 6,000 reports of potential child sex abuse have been received by Ceop in the last 12 months - a significant increase on the previous year.
Timothy Cox was convicted of running a global child abuse network

These reports come from police forces, the child protection community and the public, who can report the abuse by logging onto Ceop’s website.

Ceop also runs an education programme which has given safety advice to 1.7m children in the past year.

Jim Gamble, chief executive of Ceop said the new figures were the result of collaborative action.

“By us all working together 131 children are now safeguarded from some of the worst abuse imaginable - that is true impact,” he said.

“I hope offenders take note. Look at the ways in which together we are infiltrating your worlds, understanding your minds in order to limit deviant behaviour and I hope you think again.”

Mr Gamble said he now wanted more work to be done to convince online operators to demonstrate their commitment to child safety in a “clear and unambiguous way
Source:

The Bank of England is to announce details later of a plan to help prevent the credit crisis causing more damage to the UK banking system and economy.

Banks will be able to swap potentially risky mortgage debts for £50bn worth of secure government bonds to enable them to operate during the credit squeeze.

The Bank of England is expected to indicate further help could follow.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said it could be the world’s most generous plan to help the banking system.

The move could also be seen as a major U-turn by the Bank as it is regarded as more conservative in its financial support for banks than the Federal Reserve in the US and the European Central Bank, he said.

Intervention backed

Under the scheme, banks will be allowed to swap their mortgage debts for government securities.

The Bank of England will on Monday morning perform what some will see as the biggest U-turn in its 300-year history

 

Read Robert Peston’s blog

The Bank is expected to say that it expects around £50bn of these securities to be issued to banks in the first instance, but that it would be prepared to provide more help if required.

On Sunday, Chancellor Alistair Darling said that without the Bank of England’s intervention, there was “every chance” the UK’s financial crisis would get worse.

He confirmed the Bank would be setting up a scheme to help banks operate during the credit squeeze but insisted the loans would have to be paid back.

Sub-prime problems

Mr Darling will reveal the full details of the plan to MPs in the House of Commons after the announcement by the Bank.

British banks have become increasingly unwilling to lend to one another as a result of the credit crisis, which was sparked by massive losses for banks involved in the US sub-prime sector.

Many investors, concerned about what happened to sub-prime mortgages in the US, no longer want UK mortgage-based assets and the disappearance of this market has deprived banks of tens of billions of pounds of finance for mortgage lending.

It is one of the main reasons why the cost of mortgages for many homeowners has been rising, even though the Bank of England has been cutting its base lending rate.

Warning

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesman, has warned that the move could effectively nationalise the banks’ losses unless specific guarantees were given by lenders.

“It is obviously necessary for urgent action to be taken to unblock the mortgage market and to break the crippling effects of the credit crunch,” he said.

“However, we cannot have a situation where the banks are able to privatise their profits and nationalise their losses.”
Source:

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Preschoolers whose mothers regularly ate low-mercury fish during pregnancy may have sharper minds than their peers, a study suggests.

Researchers found that among 341 3-year-olds, those whose mothers ate more than two servings of fish per week during pregnancy generally performed better on tests of verbal, visual and motor development.

On the other hand, tests scores were lower among preschoolers whose mothers had relatively high mercury levels in their blood during pregnancy.

And mothers who regularly ate fish during pregnancy were more likely to have such mercury levels than non-fish-eaters were, the researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The findings add to evidence that fish can be brain-food, but underscore the importance of choosing lower-mercury fish during pregnancy.

“Recommendations for fish consumption during pregnancy should take into account the nutritional benefits of fish as well as the potential harms from mercury exposure,” write the researchers, led by Dr. Emily Oken of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Oily fish such as tuna, salmon and sardines contain omega-3 fatty acids, which are important in fetal and child brain development. The problem is that fatty fish are more likely to be contaminated with mercury, a metal that is toxic to brain cells, particularly in fetuses and young children.

Because of this, pregnant women are advised to avoid certain fish altogether: shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish. These fish are particularly high in mercury because they eat other fish and are long-lived, over time accumulating mercury in their fat tissue.

Less clear is how the benefits of other omega-3-containing fish stack up against the potential risks. Currently, U.S. health officials recommend that pregnant women eat no more than 12 ounces, or roughly two servings, of fish per week.

For the current study, Oken’s team collected blood samples from 341 women during their second trimester and asked them how often they ate various foods, including fish. When their children were 3 years old, they took standard tests of vocabulary, visual-spatial skills and fine-motor coordination of the hands and fingers.

Overall, the researchers found, children whose mothers ate fish more than twice a week had higher test scores.

However, children whose mothers had mercury levels in the top 10 percent of the study scored more poorly than those whose mothers had lower mercury levels.

Only 2 percent of mothers who never ate fish during pregnancy had blood mercury levels that high, versus 23 percent of those who ate fish more than twice weekly.

According to Oken’s team, the bottom line is that eating fish lower in mercury could “allow for stronger benefits of fish intake.”

Fish that are high in omega-3 but relatively lower in mercury include canned light tuna, which has less mercury than albacore tuna, and smaller oily fish like salmon. White-meat fish such as cod and haddock tend to be low in mercury, but have less omega-3 than fattier fish.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and Harvard. Some of Oken’s co-researchers have received funding from the food and supplement industry.

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, April 2008

LONDON, England (AP) – The British military admitted Thursday that it breached the human rights of an Iraqi man who died in custody, and that its soldiers also violated the rights of eight other detained Iraqis.

UK Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth condemned the abuse.

The Ministry of Defense said it expects to negotiate compensation for the survivors of the dead man, Baha Mousa, and with the eight former detainees.

The MoD admitted breaching prohibition on torture laws in the cases of all nine men.

The nine — taken into custody as alleged insurgents — were held in stress positions and deprived of sleep for about two days in extreme heat at a British army barracks near the southern Iraqi city of Basra in September 2003, prosecutors told a British military court.

Mousa, a 26-year-old hotel receptionist, died from asphyxia after soldiers restrained him following an escape attempt.

One soldier, Cpl. Donald Payne, 35, was convicted of inhumane treatment in that case, making him the first British soldier to plead guilty to a war crime under international law.

“I deeply regret the actions of a very small number of troops and I offer my sincere apologies and sympathy to the family of Baha Mousa and the other eight Iraqi detainees,” Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth said in a written statement.

“All but a handful of the over 120,000 British troops who have served in Iraq have conducted themselves to the highest standards of behavior, displaying integrity and selfless commitment. But this does not excuse that during 2003 and 2004 a very small minority committed acts of abuse and we condemn their actions.”

Defense officials are due in court Friday to answer claims on behalf of the detainees.

In Mousa’s case, the Ministry of Defense admitted “a substantive breach of Articles 2, right to life, and 3, prohibition of torture, of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

It also admitted breaching the prohibition on torture in the cases of Mohammed Dhahir Abdulah, Maitham Mohammed Ameen Challab Al-Waz, Satar Shukri Abdullah, Joad Kadhim Jamal Al-Faeaz, Dhahir Abdullah Ali Al-Mansori, Radif Tahir Muslem Alhawan, Baha Hashim Mohamed and Ahmed Taha Mosah.

“The Ministry of Defense further accepts that the admitted substantive breaches of the convention give rise to claims for compensation,” it said.

Britain’s highest court, the House of Lords, ruled in June that prisoners held by British troops are protected by European human rights law.

Mousa was one of six Iraqis killed by British troops in separate incidents in 2003 whose cases were reviewed by the Lords. The other five cases did not involve detention — a critical factor in determining whether British laws should be applied.

In 2005, the Court of Appeal upheld a High Court ruling that both the European Convention on Human Rights and the domestic Human Rights Act applied in Mousa’s case, but not in the others. The Lords affirmed that ruling
Source: CNN

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