Tories vow to tackle debt

According to the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, store cards are to have a week-long cooling off period, while students will get debt management lessons.

“It is increasingly clear Gordon Brown has not done enough. Insolvencies are up, bankruptciesare up and the numbers of people struggling to cope are up,” Mr Osborne stated, according to the BBC.

Britain’s debt is said to be growing at £1 million every four minutes and leading figures, including the governor of the Bank of England, have expressed their concern at this.

In order to make lending more responsible, the Tories said that they want to see more data sharing between lenders, which they claim will also improve competition in the loans market.

However, British Chambers of Commerce director general, David Frost, hit out at such proposals and blamed consumers, telling the Sunday Telegraph newspaper: “You don’t have to take out a store card. There is clearly an issue here of personal responsibility.

“People have got to take responsibility for managing their own affairs.”