Brown acts to ban home loan rip-offs

Rip-off mortgage products are to be banned under legislation to be disclosed by chancellor Gordon Brown early next week in a radical change for financial services regulation.

Concern about missold loans, punitive lock-ins and hidden charges has persuaded the chancellor that the financial services authority's approach to regulation of policing salespeople and the sales process is not serving consumers.

He is expected to order the FSA to directly regulate products, using new 'CAT' standards (charges, access and terms) to set benchmarks. Details of the standards will not be released until Wednesday, but are believed to require that:

• variable rate mortgages track the Bank of England's base rate by a fixed percentage amount, possibly no more than 1% over base;

• mortgage interest be calculated every month or every day, rather than the annual basis used by many lenders;

• mortgage holders be able to pay off additional lump sums without penalty and with immediate interest savings;

• fixed and capped rate mortgages should not have early redemption penalties beyond the end of the offer period.

The move will please campaigners, including the Consumers' Association, who have argued that simply policing advisers has failed. But it is expected to horrify financial services companies which claim product regulation stifles innovation. The chancellor will make a private visit to the FSA next Thursday, and is expected to receive a cool reception from the product provider representatives on the FSA board.

Last night the director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, Michael Coogan, said: "We urge the government to tell the industry in clear terms whether decisions to intervene in the design of mortgages are in the pipeline."

In a Commons debate on mortgages last night Barry Gardiner, Labour MP for Brent North, said: "I want the products cleaned up. I'm fed up with seeing people ripped off."