Civil society organisations at historic Barbican gathering challenge politicians and bankers to introduce European-style curbs on excessive interest rates

Two thousand people from more than 150 civil-society organisations will gather at the Barbican Centre in the City of London on 25 November to call for a cap on interest rates and the extension of the living wage. Concerned at the impact of the financial crisis on ordinary people, the capital’s largest civic alliance is calling for the measures in order to soften the impact on ordinary people of the financial crisis.
Among those responding to the five-point call by London Citizens will be politicians from the main parties (Stephen Timms, Greg Hands, Vince Cable), representatives of leading financiers (the British Bankers’ Association, the Corporation of London, Barclays, KPMG) and bodies such as Fair Finance and moneysavingexpert.com.
“Despite historically low interest rates and a massive taxpayer bailout of the banks, ordinary people across London have been forced into the hands of legal loan sharks in order to gain access to credit,” said Paul Regan, London Citizens trustee. “It’s time to restore responsibility.”
The London Citizens Autumn Assembly will also see the launch of a new economics foundation (nef) report, Doorstep Robbery – Why the UK needs a fair lending law, which argues for a cap on the cost of credit as well as new rules which would oblige banks to make more loans available to the less well-off.
The study by Veronika Thiel reveals that 3m UK households pay hundreds of thousands to “legal loan sharks” because of lack of access to credit from banks. London Citizens and nef argue that the UK should follow the example of major European countries and introduce a 20% cap on the cost of lending by financial institutions, thus making borrowing at interest rates of 50 or 500% illegal. Doorstep Robbery shows that in Germany and France poor people have greater access to mainstream credit than in the UK – disproving the Government’s stated objection that such curbs reduce the flow of credit.
 Also attending the London Citizens Autumn Assembly will be London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, who at a previous assembly attended by the mayoral candidates in April 2008 pledged to back the London Living Wage and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants. The pledges will be publicly reviewed and the mayor invited to re-commit. The London Living Wage, currently £7.60, was introduced by the former mayor, Ken Livingstone, in 2004 following a London Citizens campaign, for a basic wage that reflected the higher costs of living in the capital. Boris Johnson has been a strong advocate of the LLW, arguing that no one in London should be paid less.
The evening will include powerful testimonies from ordinary people whose lives have been destroyed by legal loan sharks, and readings by faith leaders which recall the prohibitions on exorbitant lending in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
London Citizens is calling for an extension of the living wage, a 20% cap on interest rates, a statutory lending code, a financial literacy project in schools and an expansion of mutual lending such as credit unions. The agenda has been drawn up through six months of listening campaigns, surveys, and democratic assemblies, attended by leaders from London Citizens members in south, east and west London. Members are mostly churches, mosques, synagogues, charities, trade union branches and ethnic associations.
Also on the night, Tessa Jowell, Olympics minister, and Andrew Altman, chief executive of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, will be asked to include a Community Land Trust for affordable housing on the Olympics site.
There will be dance groups, beat poets and singers in the foyer, as well as acrobatic street dancers and a specially commissioned London Citizens choir.  Schools and young people will be involved in the presentations and acts.
London Citizens assemblies include moments of political drama. The 25th November will be no exception.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. London Citizens is the capital’s largest civic alliance, most famous for its  London LIVING WAGE (LLW) campaign, launched in 2001, which calls for a London-weighted (+35%) minimum wage to reflect the higher costs of living in the capital. Some £30-35m have been put into the pockets of the low-paid since then, lifting 5,000 families out of working poverty. City Hall now sets the LLW rate annually – currently £7.60 in contrast to the national minimum wage of £5.80. Among London Citizens targets which now pay the LLW as result of pressure from London Citizens are GLA, Barclays, HSBC, KPMG, Westfield, Queen Mary, LSE, etc.
2. Among its other campaigns are STRANGERS INTO CITIZENS, a call for the regularisation of visa overstayers and refused asylum seekers who have put down roots in the UK and are unlikely to be returned; CITIZENS FOR SANCTUARY, which has persuaded the Home Office to invest more than £750,000 in the renovation of the UK’s largest immigration centre; CITYSAFE, an urban project linking community-rooted organisations with youth and shopkeepers, which has created 200 CitySafe havens across the capital; OUR HOMES OUR LONDON, calling for affordable housing through community land trusts; and an OLYMPICS LEGACY campaign which has negotiated a series of Peoples’ Guarantees including a £2m local academy for construction workers. More information at www.londoncitizens.org.uk.
3. London Citizens is a powerful broad-based alliance of civic organisations which have won significant victories for ordinary people. Behind it is CitizensUK (formerly COF), which has trained more than 2,000 commnunity leaders in the methods of community organising once practised by Barack Obama on the streets of Chicago. 

CONTACTS AND FURTHER INFORMATION on the ASSEMBLY:

1. LONDON CITIZENS AUTUMN ASSEMBLY, including the CITIZENS’ RESPONSE TO THE ECONOMIC CRISIS, will be held from 7-9pm on Wednesday 25 November at the Barbican  Centre, Silk St., London EC2Y 8DS. A press briefing (organised by London Citizens and the New Economics Foundation) will be held at 5.30pm, and journalists invited to join the VIP Reception at 6pm. Media welcome, but tickets for the assembly itself are limited and will be distributed on a first-come-first-serve basis. To book a place at the press briefing/VIP reception or/and to attend the assembly, please contact Sophie Stephens, email Sophie.stephens@citizensuk.org.uk, tel. 0787 202 7621.
2. To arrange interviews with London Citizens leaders, learn more about the Assembly, or to make special arrangements for cameras etc please contact the 25 November media team: AUSTEN IVEREIGH, Press & Comms Organiser, London Citizens, email austen.ivereigh@citizensuk.org.uk tel. 07905 224860, SOPHIE STEPHENS, email Sophie.stephens@citizensuk.org.uk, tel. 0787 202 7621.

1. For information on the nef report or to speak to its author, please contact Bruce Sparrow, PR officer, new economics foundation, tel. 07879 663279, email Bruce.sparrow@newconomics.org.

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