Suicide over pounds 700 debt

A student hanged himself after a bank threatened him with debt collectors over a pounds 700 overdraft. Malcolm Jones, 22, committed suicide rather than face dealing with his mounting debts, a letter to his girlfriend revealed.

Mr Jones, who studied biology at Manchester Metropolitan University, had built up a pounds 778.36 overdraft with Barclays bank plus pounds 433 on a Barclays credit card.

He was found hanging in woods near Ollerton, in Cheshire, on 7 January, just days after receiving a letter asking him to pay up in full or face a debt-collecting agency.

"If they [Barclays] had worded the letter differently, or encouraged him to go in and talk about it, maybe it wouldn't have happened," his sister Shirley Valentine said.