UK credit card probe

A government select committee is due to condemn the country's banks for allowing huge debts to be amounted, while failing to provide clear information to customers.

Borrowers have racked up £60 billion in card debts, while the top credit card companies make around £20 billion a year in profit.

Committee member Nigel Beard was quoted by Reuters news agency last week as saying the failure of lenders to provide better advice to customers "was symptomatic of an industry not attuned to thinking about things from a customer's point of view".

A key recommendation by the committee, which has yet to be implemented sufficiently, was for a "consumer box" displaying rates for other cards, and the real cost of borrowing in concrete terms (i.e. £100 over three months).

The committee is especially concerned about a number of suicides by borrowers who had amassed debts of up to £100,000 on a clutch of credit cards.

There is also anger at attempts to sell credit cards to teenagers.