Consumers need to “take responsibility”

Mike Naylor, principal researcher at Which?, said that thousands of people are at financial risk yet are still borrowing more.

“Undoubtedly people need to take responsibility for their borrowing,” said Mr Naylor. “There is a real danger that people are borrowing more and more and saving less. There are thousands of people at real financial risk.”

His warning comes as the Consumer Credit Counselling Service warns that the number of cases of “extreme debt” it dealt with doubled in the past year.

Mr Naylor said that credit cards had played a role in causing people to borrow more and more.

In addition to calling on consumers to take greater responsibility over their spending Mr Naylor said that banks need to be more responsible over who they issued credit to.