I hadn't heard of the "Starting rate for savings", sounds like a pensioner votewinning policy, must not have been listening when that came in (though it's no use to me anyway).
For P2P I have money in Zopa, which gives projected returns of up to ~6.5%. I've had some bad debt though only about one fifth of the interest I've earned, so nowhere near being an overall loss for me in any year, and Zopa have been reporting that the bad debt has been lower than their projections, and some of the bad debt does eventually get partially repaid. Though as I pay new money in regularly I haven't been doing detailed tracking of actual return rates. I'd be surprised if rates of 12% can be achieved so easily (or at least, maintained in the long term without any capital loss).