GMTV's Fiona Phillips supports Bill of Rights Challenge

18 March 2006





BRIAN LEADING BANK CHARGE!
Fiona Phillips
TWO things are still really bugging me - excessive bank charges and fixed penalty parking fines.
Let's start with the banks, no strangers to a hammering on this page, and once again in the news for over-charging.
Only this time it's good news, thanks to Brian Mullen. The 29-year-old is a people's champion, a superstar, an absolute hero, after taking on his bank over sky-high overdraft charges.
He took his local Lloyds TSB to court claiming £1,500 of penalties racked up over six years were illegal. Lloyds ignored him, the court ruled against it, and on Thursday bailiffs were due to go and seize the bank's assets.
Wahaaay! So the bank coughed up £2,000 and settled with Brian on Wednesday.
Brian told GMTV: "The charges are wrong because they don't reflect the bank's costs. Many of the ones I paid were £30 charges for letters which probably cost a few pence to send."

Many of us suffer the same rip-off, and banks want to keep it that way.
On Thursday I spoke to someone who works at a bank call centre. She said: "One of our targets is NOT to refund charges when a customer calls in. If we do too many we lose our bonus."
She also told me that rule was only "the tip of the iceberg". Nice, eh?

Which brings me neatly to local council parking schemes which turn the law on its head by accusing us of being guilty until we can prove we're innocent. They're characterised by over-zealous parking attendants slapping penalty charge notices on vehicles to make fat profits for local authorities.
They're supposed to deter drivers from preventing the flow of traffic.
Does arriving back at a parking meter two minutes late really hold up traffic? No. But it does make an extra £40 or more for the council.
Let me introduce Ashley Mote MEP, another hero. Ashley told me about the Bill of Rights of 1689, which states "...that all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void".
He says it's still law today, which means all fixed penalties are illegal.
Ashley says anyone being threatened with a fixed penalty must be convicted of an offence in a court of law first.
If he's right, we have the power to take on the banks and the councils who rob us of our hard-earned cash.
If anyone's brave enough to give it a try, let me know how you get on.