My politics is based massively around my ideas fairness, and it is on this crucial test that I think the bank charges fall down, and fall down in a big way.

Firstly the problem as I see it is the value of the charges is so often out of all proportion to the nature of the “offence”. Put simply the punishment does not fit the crime.

Where people go over their overdraft limit by a matter of pence they are charged often disproportionate fee’s. 10, 20 even sometimes as much a 35 pounds. And whilst the practice is mostly ceased now you are still sometimes also charged for the letter that is sent out. I remember once, when I was younger and frankly poorer being charged in total £50 for having been 67 pence over drawn.

This can lead to people then struggling to make ands meet the following month and often going over drawn again by less than the amount of the charges levied on them the previous week.

But I think the biggest failure of the bank charges regime is the was it disproportionately effects the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. The reality is those who have larger and more comfortable family incomes, those who don’t have most months to go searching behind the back of the sofa for change to buy milk and break, are unlikely to ever get these charges.

Further they tend, in the main, to have free retail banking, subsidised in part, by punitative charges levied on those much poorer. This to me as lefty concerned with fairness, is totally outrageous.

I think a much better system would be one where everyone paid the fair share of their running costs of their retail bank accounts, and that charges should be levied much more closely in proportion to the actual losses suffered by the bank. We all no that an automatically generated letter over a direct debit refusal costs a bank pence not tens of pounds.

And whilst banks need to challenge poor financial behaviour in customers who do not use the services correctly they should not be based on making profits.

Many of the ways in which banking system operate contribute to this happening anyhow, what is the rational logic for some card based transaction to take 3 working days to clear? If the electronic transactions were near instantaneous then it wouldn’t be possible for most bank customers to go over their overdraft limit in error. This happens for customer with Electron or Solo cards and the banks could, if they wanted, make this happen for all.

The status quo is unfair, unreasonable and regressive in nature, and people are right to question why the banking sector in retail banking in the UK should continue to operate in these ways after the taxpayer has bailed them out.

This will seem frankly astonishing to many of us, surely the whole point of the OFT is to investigate whether or not prices and fees charged by commercial enterprises are fair. And it throws up one of the important facets of civil society. Namely that there is a clear demarcation between what is right, and what is lawful.

And for my “two cents” these bank charges are clearly wrong. It is disproportionate to charge someone £30 for going a few pence overdrawn. Further all the evidence suggests that bank charges mainly effected those on lowest income… single parents, the unemployed, those on minimum wage.

Effectively a business model for the retail banks has been for the poorest customers to subsidise free banking for those better off. This is surely unfair, irrespective of whether or not it is strictly outside of the letter of the law.

In the current climate, with half of all banks only solvent and in existence due to taxpayer bailout (OUR MONEY) in seems that times should be ripe for change. Things have to be different, and uniquely we should be in a position to enforce that change. To Gordon Brown and Peter Mandleson, reigning in corrupt and greedy banks and making things fairer for ordinary people is going to be a vote winner. Time to act.

There are other things that need to happen. Clearly the CWU’s campaign for a “Post Bank” to be established should gain momentum http://bit.ly/8y2UpC . The idea has cross party, mass popular and even business support (the federation of Small Business are part of the coalition)

Secondly community based banking solutions such as Credit Unions and Co-Operatives can help move the provision of banking services onto a fairer footing, and one that is in the interests of ordinary people and not just big business and the super rich. The CWU is in the process of establishing a Credit Union, and this will hopefully help our members.

Lastly the fight over the bank fees is not quite over yet. In the supreme court ruling the door has been left open for the OFT to still challenge the fees on different grounds. There is some suggestion that competition and anti trust many be the avenue. This is because the charges across the industry have been very standardised with little variation. This suggests that the banks may have formed some sort of loose “cartel” to try and keeps the charges steady and uniform.

Whatever happens things have to change, it is wrong and unsustainable for the poorest in our society to be unfairly penalised so those more wealthy can enjoy free banking.