The culture of easily-obtainable credit has created a live now, pay later ethos which sees many people with mounting personal debts.

But with low interest rate offers, the ability to transfer debts between loans and cards and attractive deals to get people to sign up to yet more credit, it becomes easy to forget that the money still has to be paid back at some point.

For some, the easy credit comes crashing down on them - such as the pensioner who amassed tens of thousands of pounds in credit card debts.

More and more people are turning to the likes of the Citizens' Advice Bureau for help, and that organisation in particular has been overwhelmed with cases of people getting in well over their heads.

Bradford MP and Consumer Minister Gerry Sutcliffe tells in the T&A today how the government is attempting to put the brakes on runaway personal debt.

Mr Sutcliffe and his team are trying their best to temper the damage caused by personal debt, which can lead to bankruptcy, homes being repossessed and shattered families.

The financial institutions must be made to take more responsibility for the debts they help people to incur.

They have a duty to make sure that the people they lend money to or make credit available to are able - and, perhaps more importantly, will remain able in the future - to pay off what they owe.

As long as credit and loans are freely available, people will take advantage of them. But everyone must be made aware that, in the end, there will inevitably come a day of reckoning.