A "FUNERAL" procession has taken place outside the Bank of England as protesters mourned the loss of around £326 billion in savers' incomes on the fifth anniversary of the UK's record-low interest rates.
Campaign group Save Our Savers placed a coffin emblazoned with the huge sum and a bunch of flowers outside the bank in the City's Threadneedle Street.
The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee [MPC] again announced it was keeping them at a low of 0.5% yesterday. Rates are expected to rise in the second quarter of next year, keeping the Bank on track to leave inflation close to 2%.
While the current decision is good news for people with tracker and certain mortgages, people who live off their savings and investments, such as the elderly, have seen their lifestyles dip due to low returns. The protest group, Save Our Savers, calculates that low savings rates, coupled with the impact of inflation, have cost savers with money in UK banks and building societies £326.3bn over the past five years. It said the average saver with a pot of £100,000 has lost more than £4000 a year in interest income.
Spokesman Simon Rose said the group had tried to deliver it to the Bank's governor, Mark Carney, but they were "refused admission".
He said savers have seen their incomes disappear "by stealth" over the past five years. Mr Rose said: "I hope we have managed to highlight the appalling effect this has had on savers. This has distorted the economy."
The decision follows recent signals rates may rise next year as the economic recovery picks up pace. It is also the first decision since the Bank abandoned its "forward guidance" pledge linking the cost of borrowing to unemployment figures.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article