大象传媒

Business stories, with Jeremy Naylor and Mickey Clarke.

In the past few years the number of people taking out short-term, unsecured loans has risen four-fold. While these loans may have helped many people cope financially during the downturn, short term lending often comes at an eye-watering rate of interest, often over 1,000% per year. We're joined by Jenny Chapman, Labour MP for Darlington and who is behind setting a cap on how much lenders can charge for various types of unsecured loans.

GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's biggest drugs maker, is about to report its full year results. The programme hears from Andrew Packman, leader of the pharmaceutical and life sciences team at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who discusses this testing time for the UK pharmaceutical industry.

The Government is to announce a consultation on extending ATOL bonding which would help protect customers who have bought their holiday flights and accommodation separately from being left out of pocket if the travel company goes bust. We ask Bob Atkinson from Travelsupermarket.com whether this is a good idea and who will end up paying for it.

And according to Incomes Data Services, the cost of living is going up by nearly 5%, but last month, the average pay deal went up by just 2.2%. We speak to Ken Mulkearn, editor of their pay report about how the squeeze on living standards, talked about by Mervyn King last week, is to get tighter and tighter as the months go on.