Consumer Credit Bill

I realise that various Members want to intervene, but I want to make a little more progress first. As I was saying, many of us know from our constituency postbags the misery that can be caused by unscrupulous lenders who coerce people into credit agreements that they neither need nor understand. It is often society’s most vulnerable members who are the victims. More than half of over-indebted households have incomes of less than £7,500 per year. Members of this House may be familiar with some of the worst examples of the shabby practices employed, such as the lender who coerced a couple suffering from mental illness into debts totalling £5,000; or the company that took advantage of a customer’s mental health problems to sell him double-glazing, when all that he had requested was a cat-flap, saddling him with debts of £50,000. And as my hon. Friend the Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) said earlier, people have committed suicide because of the problems associated with debt. We simply cannot afford to stand idly by when faced with these predatory practices.