Credit card companies regularly give consumers false or misleading information when they call to make a claim under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, according to new research from Which?.

More than half of households are struggling to repay credit cards and loans, a Bank of England survey suggested today.

Consumer borrowing continued to fall in September as people remained cautious about taking on more debt, figures showed today.

A debt-management company, Compensation Professionals Network, has been stripped of its consumer credit licence for making illegal cold calls.

Outlook The second successive fall in monthly retail sales cannot be directly attributed to the measures unveiled in Wednesday's spending review, since the data is for September. Still, the precipitous fall-off in consumer confidence we have seen since the Chancellor's emergency Budget in June provides the biggest clue as to why spending is falling: people are spooked by the prospect of the austerity ahead (not to mention the million job losses expected as a result of the spending review).

The increase in the amount of money that Britons can put in an individual savings account per year has sparked record deposits, according to the Investment Management Association.

Britain's mortgage squeeze is getting worse, the Bank of England warned yesterday as concerns about a fresh housing market slump continue.

So should we all, as the man from the Bank of England urges, spend more to pull the economy out of recession? Or is that compounding the mistakes of the past, when Britons went on a spending spree on borrowed money, for which we are now paying the price? And anyway, if the economy has to rebalance towards more investment as we are also being told, surely that must mean less consumption?

More than 100 debt management firms face being forced out of the business as part of crackdown on the controversial sector, the Office of Fair Trading will reveal today. The watchdog has identified a string of failings by companies in the debt management business – which is expected to generate fee income of £250m by the end of the year.

Thousands of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance have run up massive debts they have no hope of repaying, a charity said today.