Pay up! Banks urged to concede defeat as judge rules against charges
Britain’s biggest banks face payouts of more than £10bn after losing the right to charge current account holders as much as they like for unauthorised borrowing. Vindicating The Independent’s year-long campaign against bank charges, the High Court ruled yesterday that fees for slipping into an overdraft or bouncing a cheque are subject to standard legal rules on fairness of contracts, raising the prospect of hundreds of thousands of successful compensation claims. High Street banks had insisted that charges on customers could be levied entirely at their own discretion, with penalties of up to £38 common for breaches of overdrafts. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is now expected to press ahead with an epic legal battle to prove that the charges are unfair. If the case succeeds, then banks may be forced to compensate every customer for charges going back years, giving millions of people a windfall.