TAKING out a mortgage is the largest and longest financial commitment most people make during their lives. Indeed, the sums involved when added up among Britain's 11 million home-buyers amount to a staggering £490 billion.

It is extraordinary that up to now people taking out a mortgage have had little or no statutory protection to ensure that they are not ripped off when shopping among the 4,000 different deals offered by scores of different lenders and thousands of brokers.

Yet what is more bizarre is that the government has muzzled the watchdog which is now being given the task of regulating the mammoth mortgage sector.

For while this market has been riddled with such scams as thousands of borrowers being sold expensive endowment-mortgage policies that may not repay their loans, others forced to take out hugely-overpriced insurance cover and many landed with enormous penalties if they try to escape before time, the new supervision that the Financial Services Authority will provide is hardly likely to truly clean up the murkier areas of the market.

How can it, when there are no plans to stop the sale of endowment mortgages, when some 9,000 brokers will fall outside the scope of the FSA altogether and the body will not have responsibility for the advice given to borrowers by lenders and brokers on the sort of mortgage they should buy?

One only needs to contrast this with the strict clampdown that, quite rightly, was put on the pensions industry after the scandal of tens of thousands of people being sold poor and expensive plans by commission-hungry sales people. If people stand to be mis-sold mortgages in the same fashion, why cannot consumers in this sector of the finance industry have the same level of protection?

The answer, it seems, is that the government has gone for regulation on the cheap and voluntary co-operation from an industry that is responsible for the abuses that are of widespread concern.

It is, of course, always the responsibility of the borrower to beware when entering into the huge commitments of a mortgage, but it is the innocent and naive among them who most stand to be duped.

The new protection they have been given may be a start, but there is a long way to go before all have the kind of safeguards that consumers in the pensions and investments market expect and have.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.