Update 10 March 2015 – this matter was dealt with by the Treasury Select Committee in Parliament on 10 February 2015.

In response to a complaint I made to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) about their collusion with HSBC I received this admission that they had used text provided by HSBC in reply to a Freedom of Information Act I made to them (click on images to enlarge):

This is the text that was supplied to them by HSBC and which they copied and pasted to me:

“Prior to 2010, when HFC sent an account to solicitors to recover outstanding debts (e.g. on personal loans, credit and store cards), it added a charge to
reflect the costs of the recovery. HFC’s agreements with customers gave it the right to do this and the fee was added after the customer had defaulted on the
loan/credit card payments.

Note “agreements with customers gave it the right to do this“. This is what the OFT order actually stated:

Note the order tells the bank to stop adding the charges until they have amended their agreements “pursuant to which it may levy the Collection Charge.

So the FCA is doing the bank’s bidding by simply passing on their fraudulent statements in response to a FoI Act request.