The Human Cost Of The Credit Crunch

The programme meets families who thought life was getting better, that they were upwardly mobile and that they were entering the middle class. But now they see themselves sliding back down the ladder. Others believed they were safe and secure but are now worried they are facing poverty.

Dispatches films with the Pugh family in the West Midlands who built up a successful tiling business over 26 years only to watch it collapse. Now they've signed on the dole.

The film features the stories of families in London's stockbroker belt who can't afford their mortgages, and Mark and Renata in Lincolnshire, who after 23 years of loyal work, have lost their jobs because the factory making Marks & Spencer's top-of-the-range Italian ready meals has closed.

Has Britain become a country which thought it would enjoy fettucine and sun-dried tomatoes, but is now facing a move back to a life on chips and mushy peas? The programme films with working families in Birmingham who despite all their hard work have not been able to lift their children out of poverty, and with pensioners who fear they can't afford their heating bills this winter.

And as we get poorer, Dispatches discovers we are becoming more vulnerable to those who prey on our need for quick money to pay our bills, keep our homes and even feed our children. Dispatches finds the key groups who Tony Blair won over - the aspiring middle classes and solid working class voters - are now deeply disillusioned.

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