Has the UK government gone far enough with credit card protection?

Yesterday's announcement that the UK government is set to issue a raft of proposals for the UK credit card industry to effectively protect consumers has been well received across the board. However, there is growing concern that the proposals are nothing but "lip service" at this moment in time as we approach the next general election.

One of the main proposals is to give consumers the power to reject interest rate rises and instead opt to pay off their existing debt at the original rate. While this looks very positive to UK consumers, and especially those in financial trouble, there is no way that the credit card industry will sit back and see potentially millions if not billions of pounds taken away from them in a second.

If the UK government continues to attack the credit card industry it is likely we will see an increase in "additional charges" which will affect each and every credit card customer in the UK and have the potential to bring in significant income for those companies involved. As we saw with the banking overdraft debacle, there is no way that banks and financial institutions in the UK will sit back and let the UK government dictate to them.