Unlock the handcuffs holding us to banks

It is inspiring to see the energy, commitment and enthusiasm of the groups of people setting up credit unions and the new money- lending trusts. After years in the financial backwaters the credit unions are inching towards the mainstream.

They are receiving some assistance from banks, under orders from a Government that believes credit unions should flourish. But there is irony in the way the Government has championed this cause while virtually ignoring the plight of building societies, founded by people with much the same aims.

The societies' high street role has diminished to the point where they are no longer the dominant forces in the savings and mortgage markets. This has reduced the competition that Ministers crave in a market where the Cruickshank report concluded that customers were being overcharged by up to £5 billion a year.

The measures the Government announced last Friday should help improve the range of services and products the banks offer. But don't expect to see sudden dips in the profitability that earns them as much as £63 a second. Much of the detail has yet to be hammered out, and it will require a firm hand on the banks if consumers are to be able to desert the institutions that rip them off.

The banks' efforts to streamline the system for switching current accounts - now being overhauled - will need particularly careful monitoring. These accounts are the handcuffs that immobilise customers so effectively, making them easy targets to be sold other inferior products.

The Government should also continue to monitor the building societies, which remain under pressure from people wanting to turn them into banks.

Straight talking from the Commons Social Security Select Committee on the state pension is welcome. The pension should be linked to earnings; and pensioners need £90 a week to live on. This is anathema to a Government which has chosen an elaborate and confusing mixture of means tests and tax credits to appease pensioners' anger about this year's 75p increase.

As charities point out, the elderly are a growing force among voters, and the Government would be unwise to ignore them.