Cost of living: UK households face £17,200 of debt by 2026
Is this the ultimate failure of the so-called ‘Party of Financial Responsibility’?
Instead of creating conditions in which everybody should be able to manage their own finances in relative ease, instead the Conservatives have dumped the average family into a predicted £17,200 of debt by 2026.
Here’s The Big Issue:
People across the UK will face a record level of debt in the coming years, with the average household expected to owe nearly £17,200 by 2026, according to new analysis.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned of a “debt time bomb” as households are set to face a £1,400 rise in credit card and loan debt in 2024. This is an increase of 11% on 2023.
Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC, said: “Every month the Tories stay in office the more families will be pushed into debt. This party of out-of-touch millionaires is more focussed on clinging to power than on growing our economy and getting living standards rising again.”
TUC analysis found that over the course of the next parliament, unsecured debt is set to rocket by £6,000 on average per family. That includes debt from credit cards, loans and purchase hire agreements, while excluding mortgages and student loans.
“If something doesn’t change, real wages won’t recover to their 2008 levels until 2028,” Nowak added. “These 13 years of economic stagnation have left working people brutally exposed to the cost of living crisis. We cannot afford a Tory government for one day longer.”
It gets worse:
These are shocking figures, but they don’t tell the wider story of the consequences of this debt. Recent research from the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute found that around half of people facing debt have had suicidal thoughts in the last 20 months.
Rob, who spoke to The Big Issue about his experiences of debt and the impact it had on his mental health, said: “It’s the sense of shame that I’m not better at doing this stuff. A sense of being out of control and not being able to manage. There’s the inability to ask for help, because a man my age who had just had a very successful career should be able to manage.”
The TUC estimates that the average worker would now be £14,800 a year better off if their pay had kept up with pre-crisis real wage growth trends since 2008.
Nowak told The Big Issue: “There’s a sense that people are just at the end of their tether. They’ve been working flat-out through the pandemic and beyond, workloads ever-increasing, resources perpetually on the decline, and they’re being asked to do more for less. They’ve hit a breaking point.”
The union body says the sharp spike in debt, along with stagnant living standards, will “more than wipe out” any gains from the chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s cut to national insurance tax.
Source: Cost of living: UK households face £17,200 of debt by 2026
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
