IT would take longer for someone to wade through all the small print on documents produced by some car insurers than it would for them to read a novel such as George Orwell's Animal Farm, research by a consumer website suggests.

Fairer Finance found that Endsleigh, Sheila's Wheels, Esure and M&S Bank have all produced motor insurance policy documents running to more than 30,000 words, making them longer than Animal Farm.

At the other end of the scale, the research found that LV= did "the same job" in 6,901 words.

It also looked at the length of the small print surrounding some bank accounts. It found the terms and conditions for an HSBC bank account came in at just over 34,000 words, which made them almost 5,000 words longer than John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men.