Have you ever felt ripped off by your bank? I’m not talking about the scandal of banker irresponsibility which has helped land us into the deepest recession in living memory. I’m talking about the sense of injustice you feel when you get your statement to discover you’ve been charged outrageous fees for having stepped over an agreed overdraft limit.

If this has happened to you, you’re in good company. Which? estimated that we paid over £4bn in unauthorised bank charges last year, averaging £120 from each one of us. If you go over your limit, even by a few pence, you’ll be slammed with a charge – typically £20-30 – plus a similar fee for every payment, such as a standing order or direct debit, while you are over your limit.

So for anyone who’s not savvy with money, or whose health or circumstances affect their ability to manage their money, this can mount up to an enormous problem. As a result, those least able to handle the situation are the ones who get hammered most.

You would think that our Office of Fair Trading (OFT) should be able to deal with unfair terms of this kind, but no. Last November the Supreme Court overturned a decision by the Court of Appeal that would have allowed the OFT to act. The OFT can rule on ‘core price terms’ like the basic contract you sign up to, but not ‘ancillary terms’ like charges for unauthorised overdrafts.

So we need a change in the law. The new coalition government will, I’m sure, be supportive of this. Vince Cable himself tabled an Early Day Motion last year about it last year. But we do have a very crowded legislative programme to work through.

So I’ve decided to be helpful. Having come up in the ballot for introducing a Private Member’s Bill, I decided to take up the cause. Supported by Which? I will be presenting my Bill to the House on Friday November 12th. Unfortunately it’s the third bill up for discussion on that day, but even if we don’t get to vote on it, I’m hopeful the government will adopt it in the next legislative programme.

It’s not realistic to expect banks to voluntarily stop this licence to print money. We have to take action to redress the balance – so that we again feel they are serving us and not the other way round.

Lorely Burt is MP for Solihull and Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party