SDLP welcomes pay-day loans warning over ‘ Irresponsible lending’

The Strabane SDLP District Executive has strongly welcomed the news that the UK’s 50 biggest pay-day lenders are to be given 12 weeks to clean up their industry or face being shut down.

SDLP Spokesperson Patrick Leonard said; The SDLP strongly welcome this move which is a big victory for all of those who have been campaigning for intervention in the high-cost credit market, which is often uncompetitive and exploitative, and has seen pay-day loan companies charging annual interest rates of up to 4,000 per cent per year.

“This kind of lending – where greedy and unscrupulous loan companies prey on the financially excluded by offering easy credit at extortionate rates – has tipped so many people across the Strabane District and throughout the North into inescapable cycles of debt and poverty.

“Whilst home-credit agencies, moneylenders and loan sharks are not a new phenomenon, in the current economic downturn they have become more prevalent, more pernicious and more profitable.

“SDLP MP’S have sponsored motions at Westminster, spoken during Commons debates and have lent full support to campaigns urging the government to introduce a legal cap on the amount of interest that can be charged by pay-day loan companies.

“People in my district are suffering enough at this difficult time, It is only right that steps are taken to protect some of the poorest borrowers in society, rather than allow them to be exploited, Mr Leonard Said.