A call to arms for savers

By Martin Lewis

We've now limboed well under the 300-year historic low for Bank of England rates, and it's time to fight back.

Huzzah! This is a battle cry, out to the nation's savers. We've now limboed well under the 300-year historic low for Bank of England rates, and it's time to fight back. This is a three-pronged savings manifesto championing better rights and showing how to boost your interest.

Savers' Rights: Don't Hide Our Interest

Month by month savers have been slapped across the face by a succession of half per cent Bank Rate cuts. Yet click onto your account, or open the statement envelope and does it indicate what interest rate you're now earning? Not on your nelly. At best, most provide an overloaded list of obfuscated accounts with similar or identical names.

Yet there's no technological barrier here, if they can tell us what's in our account, they can tell us the rate it pays. It can only be a downright dirty attempt to create a fog to stop people from finding out how pitiful their interest is.

While credit card providers are forced to provide a summary box of data, savings' Scarlet Pimpernels hide info with impunity. This must stop. How can we improve our interest if they don't tell us the rate in the first place?

To combat this abject failure, I've launched a petition on No 10s website to mandate a change that forces disclosure, nearly 10,000 signed it on the first day, and scores expressed real anger about the issue, if you agree please add your weight at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/savingsummarybox.

This summary box needs to include the current interest rate and the size of any bonuses and withdrawal penalties. Yet it's about more than that, the savings safety situation should be included too.

With that, if you opened a Post Office Savings account you'd know it had zero UK Government protection, only Irish protection instead. Or open AA savings and you'd be told if you've got cash in Halifax too, you're only protected up to £50,000 in total (see www.moneysavingexpert.com/safesavings for more).