SIR – News of the Financial Services Authority restoring some sensible rules to mortgage lending is welcome indeed, albeit about ten years too late for many individuals and once-proud organisations like the former Bradford & Bingley, where staff have lost jobs, and whose shareholders appear to have lost everything.

Of course, this misery, both human and corporate, is firmly rooted in the disgraceful abrogation of the traditional responsibilities of his office by New Labour’s first chancellor Gordon Brown. When backed by PM Tony Blair, he divided them into three – the Bank of England, the Monetary Policy Committee and the FSA – so others would be to blame when things went wrong.

Older people like me, now an OAP, wonder how things could have been allowed to get so bad. In 1972, buying my first home, the deposit was a minimum ten per cent. Only my earnings, not my wife’s, were used for the ‘affordability’ test of one month’s mortgage repayment, to be not more than one week’s wages. ‘Interest only’ loans were only given to those – like me – who could assign an endowment assurance policy to the lender, the interest rate then 8.125 per cent!

What this country needs now is more Mr Micawber-like policies and less Viv Nicholson, which the coalition seem to be adopting.

D S Boyes, Rodley Lane, Leeds