Desperate borrowers ‘feel obliged’ to repay debts

This is the view of insolvency practitioner Melanie Giles, who believes that although there is still a social stigma attached to debt, “in time, another generation may not feel like that”.

Speaking at a financial industry convention in Canary Wharf for The Great Debt Debate, she said that there are “usually good reasons” for the debt, such as redundancy, divorce, or other change in circumstances.

“At the moment, clients still have this moral obligation to pay back as much as they can and the majority of consumers don’t go out with the intention of borrowing money that they can’t pay back,” she stated.

“People don’t intentionally go out borrowing and when things go wrong I think that the majority of people do genuinely want to pay something back.”

According to MoneyExpert, ten per cent of Brits admit to having missed a credit card payment over the past year, which means that the public was charged £47.8 million in fees in 2006.