Ian Wilson KC

Preserving the pillars of banking law: safeguarding core legal principles in an age of consumer protection

Consumer protection is best achieved through legislation and regulation, not by diluting or departing from established principles of common law and equity. Where a particular social problem affecting consumers is identified, such as the proliferation of Authorised Push Payment fraud, changes in the regulatory rules can provide the solution, taking into account a full range of policy factors. Courts should resist the inclination to step in with solutions that may seem to provide justice on the facts of the particular case, but do injustice in the wider sense of undermining the certainty and predictability that a stable system of legal principles is there to provide.