Gordon Brown has recently been accused of many things, ands this now includes raising false hopes over a promised scheme to help people struggling with mortgage payments.  

When the PM announced the Home Owner Support Scheme in December he said it would be available from early 2009. However, the scheme will now be launched in April due to protracted negotiations with lenders over how it will work.  

The scheme was meant to help people who are facing a sudden drop in income to defer their mortgage payments. The ministers involved continue to deny that it has been delayed despite the four month hiatus between the original start date and the current one. 

The Conservative spokesman said that it was “completely wrong for the government to announce a scheme where the details haven’t been worked out and where months later people’s expectations will have been dashed because actually they are still losing their homes rather than the scheme being in place.”  

The Liberal Democrats were similarly scathing of the government’s efforts. “The much-publicised Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme announced last year has not yet helped a single family in trouble. The prime minister’s wasteful complacency means that millions of extra families could be added to already full social housing lists.” 

It is true that the above sources were always unlikely to be friendly to a government initiative, but even the independent Council of Mortgage Lenders said the apparent delay in implementing the policy had “caused consumers some confusion and some sense of not knowing where to turn in the meantime”.  

Of course there has to be a lot of discussion between the government and lenders about how the scheme would work and it has needed legislation to be passed before it could begin. However, when there is a gap between an announced policy measure and its implementation, inevitably people wonder what’s happening and try to find out about that. 

In a similar vein, the director of debt relief charity Credit Action said there had been slow progress on the scheme and the way it was announced had been “messy”.  

In December, Mr Brown said eight major mortgage lenders had signed up to the plan in principle. But nearly three months later, the government is still locked in talks with lenders over how the scheme, which is meant to cover mortgages worth up to £400,000, will work.  

The idea is that lender and homeowner will agree on the proportion of payment to be deferred up to 100% but the government is understood to have clashed with lenders over the extent to which it will underwrite it.  

Asked to explain the apparent delay the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, said people would be able to benefit from the scheme “fairly soon”. I’m sure this will be comforting to the thousands of people struggling to cope with their mortgage conditions in the current climate and who have no reason at all not to trust the twisted words and empty promises of this government. I always find it ironic that Brown’s mantra is that the opposition would ‘do nothing’ to help people when his idea of helping is making headline grabbing announcements and then failing to follow through with substance.

The BBC’s Moneybox Live program recently revealed a growing problem in Britain as Banks are transferring money from people’s bank accounts without their permission and in some cases leaving them unable to pay their mortgages. 

The claim originally came from the charity Citizens Advice Bureau. They have faced a growing number of complaints that banks are taking money from people’s current accounts to cover credit card and loan debts. 

Both the charity and the BBC are calling on banks to scrap the practice. However, the banking code as it stands allows them to transfer funds without permission.  

In most cases, companies can only force someone to pay a debt by taking them to court. However, as the BBC discovered, the Right of Set Off allows banks to legally transfer cash to pay credit card or loan arrears without account holders’ permission.  

The Citizens Advice Bureau says it has seen a 25% rise in the number of such cases in each of the past two years. Even considering the financial crisis these figures are astonishing. 

In response, the British Bankers’ Association says the onus is on customers to talk to their banks if they are in difficulty. They have a point here, people burying their heads in the sand when confronted with bad financial news are only storing up more problems for the future. 

However, that argument does not, in my opinion justify banks transferring money from people’s accounts without their permission. 

The Citizens Advice Bureau says there have been specific examples of people having benefit payments removed from accounts, leaving them unable to meet “priority debts” like mortgages and council tax.  

The British Bankers’ Association says cases where money has been removed “inappropriately” are regrettable but that banks take their responsibilities under the banking code seriously. I can’t help but suspect that in the current climate those responsibilities are becoming less of a priority.  There is no excuse for banks moving their customer’s money without their permission, especially if it is simply to service their own bad debts.