Darling pushes banks on payments

One of the key factors with this Labour Government is the unintended consequences of their actions.

The 10p fiasco is a classic case, they did not want to double tax for the lowest paid, but it happened because Gordon Brown lied to his own MPs.

Now this example on mortgages is another classic

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages/article

Darling and that dimwit Flint are calling on banks to be more lenient on homeowners who fall behind on their payments.

Fine - OK so the banks let them have more of a holiday or roll the interest up, but whatever it is the banks lose money or defer getting their money for a bit longer.

So if this is to be the pressure put on banks, what will they do when they consider new loans.

They will have to consider that they will not be able to repossess people who are not paying their mortgages, but they will have to allow the borrower to have a payment holiday.

This means that they will tighten up their criteria even further and make extra sure on the affordability of the loan to the borrower.

So this central diktat will have the effect of tightening lending criteria making it harder for people to take out new borrowing.