Viewpoint: While headlines about the credit crunch focus on the banks, the poorest in society are being hit hardest of all, argues Kaliani Lyle of Citizens Advice Scotland.

The last decade in Scotland has been a period of change. We have seen a new Scottish Parliament, a new Prime Minister in Westminster, a change of government at Holyrood and the complete overhaul of our local government system.

But the proportion of personal wealth held by the top 10% has swollen from 47% to 54%. The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever. We've become a hideously unequal society, with precious little money trickling down.

Martin Luther King once described the US economic system as "socialism for the rich and rugged free-market capitalism for the poor." Fifty years later, this phrase neatly describes the situation in the UK. Look at Northern Rock, which received £3bn of taxpayers' money in government handouts, and compare it with those who lost their money in the Farepak scheme, who have still seen little by way of compensation.

I am not qualified to comment on whether the state should or should not provide a safety net for the financial sector. My interest is in what needs to be done to lift people out of poverty; in how the state can help all citizens through these troubled times, and in addressing the problems faced daily by clients of Scotland's Citizens Advice Bureaux - which are often the result of market failure.

Two areas which cause huge problems for CAB clients, and which are at the heart of the current economic crisis, are consumer debt and the cost of energy.

With UK consumer debt at £1.4 trillion, people here are borrowing, on average, twice as much as those in other Western European countries. Irresponsible lending has meant that these people are often borrowing beyond their means. Our advisers have seen clients - already in debt - allowed to borrow tens of thousands of pounds, with devastating consequences.

Most CAB clients are not chronic spenders, but people using credit to juggle basic living expenses: people for whom buying a new cooker or making a minor household repair can be a major project in financial engineering.

This is how it is for such clients: your cooker breaks down. You have no savings, so you try to apply to the social fund. But all applications must now be made by telephone. There is no phone in your flat (because you realised that it was cheaper to keep a "pay-as-you-go" mobile for emergencies than to pay line rental). You are kept on hold for so long it costs £5 of phone credit. The cheapest cooker you can find costs £4.99 a week. But when I say "cheapest" I mean cheapest per week: overall you will have paid £746 for a cooker worth less than half that.

What such people need is access to affordable credit: a basic banking service, accessible locally, providing small loans with no hidden charges.

What we have now is the credit crunch. Not lending to people might help solve the banks' bad debt problem, but where does it leave those on low incomes - who most need the financial breathing space that credit allows? It will simply push some into borrowing from other, less regulated sources. We need to build up the credit union sector and liberalise public-sector sources of credit, such as the government's Social Fund.

Our cases tell us that this fund is currently failing to meet the needs of those for whom it was designed. There is simply not enough money in the pot. We are told that there is not enough money to put into the pot. But the billions that have been found to underwrite the losses of banks suggest otherwise.

We know from the enquiries that bureaux receive that too many people are also getting a raw deal from power companies. Common problems include inaccurate bills, harsh debt recovery practices, prepayment meters that charge the poorest customers more and an inefficient complaints system.

Five years ago, Ofgem acknowledged that the energy market in Scotland wasn't working effectively. New trading arrangements were meant to save each Scottish household £20 a year. Not only did those savings never materialise, but minds far greater than mine are at a loss to explain why.

Similarly, it takes minds far greater than mine to explain why it is acceptable for some suppliers to continue backdating charges to pre-payment meters because the power companies have failed to recalibrate them.

One man recently told his CAB office that his £5 of credit only lasted until he boiled the kettle. The company said they were recovering a debt accrued two years ago.

No other market would tolerate this: can you imagine going to buy your milk and being charged £49 because the shop put the prices up two years ago but hadn't got round to changing their till?

These issues ask big questions about how we as a society see ourselves. If we see ourselves solely as consumers, then we must rely on the market to deliver solutions to our problems.

But Scotland needs to look beyond the market to a society which can offer solutions a marketplace of consumers can neither consider nor deliver.

Much has been written about what the government should do about the crisis in the financial sector and to alleviate the conditions of the now approaching five million fuel poor.

One thing strikes me - at this moment we have an opportunity in Scotland to regain the sense of the common good. The message is that it cannot be right that those least able to afford it pay the most for credit and energy.

Rights and responsibilities are a system that must apply across society as a whole - to individuals but also to public and private institutions. Then, and only then, can we begin to progress towards a fair and just society. Let's make the next 10 years a period of change in that direction.

Kaliani Lyle is Chief Executive of Citizens Advice Scotland.