Loans 'both borrower's and lender's responsibility'...
14 September 2007
Chancellor Alistair Darling has urged both lenders and borrowers to take responsibility for the amount of money they loan or borrow, in a response to the UK's rising debt levels.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Alistair Darling said he believed banks must demonstrate more responsibility towards whom they loan money to.
He urged both sides to think "long and hard" about the risks involved in taking out a loan after figures from Citizens Advice (CA) revealed that debt problems in the UK have reached record figures.
While Mr Darling admitted that the government "can't stand on the shoes of borrowers or lenders", he added: "[Borrowers] need to ask themselves, 'can I repay this?' and lenders need to ask themselves 'if it goes wrong, can I get it back?'. People do need to think long and hard about this.
"It doesn't do any good for anybody, particularly the person in debt but also the lender, to be getting into a situation where you have bad debts."
Some 1.7 million people sought advice on debt matters from CA advisers last year.
