Fighting illegal money lending, with Catherine Wohlers

So I think one of the problems is there's not a very clear cause and effect when people are making this argument. It's not like the high cost credit lending market halaves and four weeks later, there are twice as many loan sharks.

One of the things we know from our victims is an awful lot of them haven't tried to get credit from elsewhere. It's not that they've gone down the credit ladder and ended up at the bottom, they actually haven't tried to get credit for elsewhere, because it's not for the "likes of me" or they've tried 10 years ago and would declined, and nothing's changed in their situation, so they don't think they would lend now.

But sometimes people have got access to credit. And they still borrow from loan sharks, because nearly half the people we helped last year thought the loan sharks weretheir friend.