Who is to blame for Britain’s debt crisis?
Lenders have been portrayed as villains in the debt crisis but big banks tell the programme they have acted responsibly. Gary Hoffman, group vice-chairman of Barclays, explained: “People binge eat, they binge drink, sometimes they spend, sometimes they binge borrow and what I encourage, what Barclays encourage, is for customers to talk to us when they have a problem.” Jeff Randall visits the UK’s biggest credit reference agency Experian who store every detail of our financial lives and keep them on file for years. The banks use this information to help them decide whether to give credit. So why have the banks lent so much to so many people who can’t repay the cash? Jeff explains: “We’ve been on a borrowing binge and they’ve been on a lending frenzy. The more the banks lent the higher they thought their profits would be.” But the government also bears some responsibility for fostering a debt culture, says Jeff. Student loans, for example, may have introduced a whole generation to debt.
