Kent consumer law expert Professor Iain Ramsay calls for a broad-ranging review to assess the economic and social role of consumer credit in Britain post-Brexit in written evidence submitted to the Treasury Committee on Household Finance.
Professor Ramsay says “persistent weaknesses remain in credit regulation” such as the ‘poor paying more’ for credit and calls for a reform of the rules on personal insolvency and bankruptcy. He says no fundamental review has been undertaken of the role and regulation of consumer credit in the UK economy since the the Crowther Committee Report in 1971.
His evidence, which focusses on the question of the “sustainability of the UK’s household credit and consumer debt’, has been submitted this month to a House of Commons select committee inquiry into income, saving and debt.
The inquiry is interrogating the state of UK household balance sheets, including whether households are saving adequately in the current economic environment and the effectiveness of the market in financing solutions and products to low income households.
Professor Ramsay has been involved in interdisciplinary research and policy making on consumer credit in North America and Europe over several decades and is a co-drafter of the World Bank Report on the Treatment of the Insolvency of Natural Persons (2013).
He conducted ground breaking empirical research on personal insolvency in Canada, and was a member of the Canadian Personal Insolvency Task Force (2000-2002). He has written extensively on comparative consumer insolvency and posts regularly on his blog Credit, Debt and Insolvency.
His current research, supported by a Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, focuses on explanations for the patterns of development of personal insolvency in the US and Europe. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute.