According to a report by insolvency trade body R3, 13% of Scots had taken on extra debt through credit cards, loans and increased overdraft facilities compared to 12% of people in the rest of Britain.

However whilst 43% of Scots said they struggled to make it to payday this was 3% less than the percentage of people who struggled in the rest of the UK.

Two million people in the rest of Britain compared to just over 200,000 Scots have taken out a payday loan in the last year, but according to R3, one in five Scots said they struggled to repay these loans, whereas only one in 10 Britons said the same.

R3 Scottish council member John Hall was worried that such a large percentage of people were struggling to make it to payday, using payday loans to bridge the gap. He said that they tended to have high interest rates and often those who used this type of credit found themselves in a vicious debt cycle, especially if they then experienced a sudden job loss.

He went on to say that if was finding it difficult to pay their bills, it was good to seek financial advice before taking out further lines of credit as these stop-gap measures could exacerbate the situation.

Responding to the R3 report, Citizens Advice Scotland chief executive Lucy McTernan said she was not surprised by the figures and that the evidence from Scottish CABs had reported clearly for some time that debt remained a massive issue, with Scottish CAB advisers dealing with 132,000 debt cases last year, accounting for a quarter of their total cases.

She said that there were too many Scots who were drowning in debt and the problem was getting worse, with CAB evidence showing that personal debt levels in Scotland had increased by 50% during the first wave of the recession, with the average personal debt sitting at more than £20,000.

She added  that over 40% of CAB debt clients said they had gone without food or fuel in order to try and pay off their debts, in many cases because they were being pressurised aggressively by their creditors.