LONDON LETTER: Crippling levels of debt are pushing up rates of stress and depression, and pushing some people to extremes
IN THE 1950s Joan Nunn was the face of a well-known toothpaste in the first-ever commercial run on ITV. Last year, her husband, struggling with debts he could not pay, tried to smother her to death as she lay asleep.
On Tuesday, Peter Nunn, an accomplished chef and former financial adviser, who had hidden the scale of their mounting debts from her, was sentenced to eight years in jail by Bristol Crown Court.
Earlier this month in Wales, Hugh McFall from Oswestry, described as gentle and loving by neighbours, murdered his wife and daughter before hanging himself. He, too, had buckled under the strain of living a life he could not afford.
This year, a record 150,000 people in the UK – 15 per cent more than last year – are facing bankruptcy, but up to one million people are finding it difficult to cope.
Official figures say the UK’s privately held debt, including credit cards, mortgages and personal loans, now runs to £1.5 trillion (€1.7 trillion) – nearly twice what the treasury owes international lenders.
Including mortgages, every household owes £56,000, though the bulk of that is held by younger homeowners, while, on average, people are trying to juggle between 11 different creditors.
A house is being repossessed every 11.2 minutes. One person is being declared insolvent or bankrupt every 3.72 minutes, according to statistics compiled by the lobby group Credit Action.
The average owing on the 11 million mortgages currently outstanding is £111,000, while the average debt, including mortgages, of each UK adult is £30,000 – 129 per cent of average earnings.
Last month, the housing charity Shelter reported that up to one million people had borrowed money on their credit cards to pay their mortgage or rent over the past year – 6 per cent of all households.
Contrary to expectations, default figures on credit card debt have not risen, but some lenders are increasingly likely to go to court to tie unsecured debt to a debtor’s assets, usually their house.
Since 2000, the number of unsecured creditors taking this action has risen sevenfold, while three-quarters of the 130,000 such applications made in 2007 – the latest year for which figures are available – were granted, according to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau.
Unsurprisingly, many are finding it difficult to sleep. Three-quarters of family doctors have seen an increase in the number of patients reporting stress and depression over the past 18 months.
Men are doing worst, according to a survey carried out jointly by the Post Office and the Family Doctor Association, with an 82 per cent rise in the number reporting stress tied to money worries, compared with 74 per cent of women.
Half of all those surveyed under 30 reported sleeping troubles, with one in eight men in the age group experiencing impotence. A third of doctors are now prescribing antidepressants for patients under 30.
And the group is not just worrying about meeting its own obligations. Over half of them, according to separate Post Office polling, are now concerned about how they will support their parents in retirement.
One in 10 of all calls taken in the past year by the Samaritans in the UK concerned financial pressures, while suicide figures, which had been dropping, have been rising since 2008.
“If people don’t talk about their problems they can build up over time into more serious emotional distress,” said Samaritan trustee and professor in health policy at Edinburgh University Dr Stephen Platt.
Such are the numbers that debt advice agencies report a 30 per cent rise in calls from people needing help, and some have imposed a six-week waiting period before they see new people.
Faced with these problems, people have pulled in their horns, paying back about £400 million more in debt each month than they took on every month since last July. New credit card spending is continuing to fall, down 3.7 per cent on the year, though the amount outstanding on “plastic” jumped by £4 billion to £54 billion last year, as people were forced to stretch out repayment.
In all, total consumer credit has dropped 1.8 per cent. Savings are up by nearly 5 per cent. Shop sales, meanwhile, have shrunk. And the United Kingdom needs people to spend if it is to begin a proper recovery.
Offering evidence in Bristol at Peter Nunn’s trial for attempted murder this month, Det Sgt Lee Jones said Nunn and his wife had been due to be evicted from their home in Wookey, near Wells.
Nunn, a former member of Somerset Rotary Club, had said he wanted “to take his wife with him”. Now he faces a minimum of four years in jail, the judge has ruled.
His wife, who is 80, now lives alone on benefits in a one-bedroom flat.
It is all so far away from the glory days of the 1950s, after she had finished promoting toothpaste, when her image was captured by photographer David Bailey for the pages of Vogueand Vanity Fair.
