The scale of money laundering, fraud and other economic crime in the UK, is thought to run to tens or hundreds of billions of pounds per year. In December 2019 the Treasury Committee found various regulatory and legislative failings in the way in which these crimes were being tackled in the UK. It urged the Government to make improvements to the supervisory system and to introduce new powers to combat economic crime. The Government agrees about the need to tackle these crimes. It set out its overall approach in its July 2019 Economic Crime Plan. The Plan covers the years 2019-2022 and draws together all the work being conducted by the public and private sector. The Royal United Services Institute said that as at September 2020, 23% of actions in the plan had been completed, 59% were in progress, 9% were overdue, 6% of actions either had no due date or had been paused.
Documents to download
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Household Debt: Key Economic Indicators (87 KB, PDF)
This document focusses on standard official sources. For more timely data on the economy, see the Library briefing Coronavirus: Latest economic data.
Household debt as a % of disposable income
Household debt peaked in Q2 2008 at 147% of household disposable income. It then declined to 124% by late 2015.
Growth in household debt levels accelerated from early 2016, so that the debt-to-income ratio rose again to 128% by mid-2017. In Q1 2020 it was 127.1%.
Statistical note: The household debt and income source data were changed in May 2019. Previously debt and income totals included the non-profit sector (mostly charities and universities). The new data reflects only individuals in the household sector. The overall historical trends are unchanged. For more see Box 1 in the Library paper on household debt.
Current average mortgage interest rates
The average Standard Variable Rate (SVR) was 3.64% in August 2020, down 0.65% points on a year ago.
The average 2-year fixed mortgage rate was 1.59% in August 2020, the same as a year ago.
Individual insolvencies, England and Wales
There were 32,153 individual insolvencies in England and Wales in Q2 2020, up by 3,406 on the previous quarter. This is the largest increase since the current series began in 2010.
The Q2 2020 level is 6.9% more than the level in Q2 2019.
In Scotland, there were 2,082 individual insolvencies in Q2 2020, 41% lower than a year before.
Documents to download
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Household Debt: Key Economic Indicators (87 KB, PDF)
Related posts
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Financial Indicators: Data from FTSE100, as well as oil prices and gold prices.
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Business and Consumer Confidence: Information on business and consumer confidence surveys, which is generally released ahead of official statistical data and can indicate changes to the economic outlook as well as turning points in the economic cycle.
