THE VOICE may have been deeper but when character actor Michael Sheen took to the stage in the Banqueting Hall at Glasgow City Chambers this week his words and their delivery made it clear who he was seeking to channel: fellow Welshman Aneurin Bevan.

As a performer who has played Tony Blair, Brian Clough and David Frost on the silver screen, Mr Sheen is renowned for his ability to become the people he portrays.

In terms of rhetoric at least the likeness to Mr Bevan was uncanny.

Just as the post-war Labour politician who oversaw the creation of the NHS argued that improving the nation’s health was vital to its welfare, Mr Sheen was in Scotland to make the same link between financial health and general wellbeing.

Having chosen the annual conference of industry body Responsible Finance to unveil his End High Cost Credit Alliance, Mr Sheen borrowed from the late politician when he told the audience that he started the "movement" because he feels “today must be better than yesterday and we demand that tomorrow be better than today”.

To achieve this he wants to help bring about an end to some lenders’ practice of offering punitive interest rates to people who are already struggling with high levels of debt.

Noting that this has so far proved hard to do “in a society that’s based on making maximum profits from the individuals who can least afford it”, Mr Sheen said that what is needed in the market is “a fair, affordable credit product”.

“Life can be hard, it doesn’t have to be made harder by businesses trying to make as much money as they can from people’s difficulties,” he said.

“Too often part of the story includes a predatory business or individual that [leads people] into deep financial difficulties. For many, that predator is a high street name.”

Although there are many credit unions and other lower-cost providers out there, finding them can be easier said than done, especially for people who may be suffering mental health difficulties as a result of falling into unmanageable debt.

The role of the End High Cost Credit Alliance, which is being led by Mr Sheen and is so far made up of 50 organisations and individuals operating in the responsible finance space, is to help drive people towards them.

“Our aim is to create a fairer financial landscape for those who need credit,” Mr Sheen said.

“We want to shift the sector away from large amounts of money for an exploitative few.”

To do this the alliance not only wants to highlight how damaging high-cost credit can be but to ensure there are plenty of cheaper alternatives available too.

Mr Sheen, who wants regulators and policymakers to play a role in making finance fairer for everyone, also plans to take his message into workplaces and schools to arm everyone with the knowledge and skills to be able to make financial decisions that are in their own best interests.

The final piece of the plan, and the one that Mr Sheen can arguably have the most influence on, is to get the general public to see that high-cost credit is enough of a problem for them to want to do something about it too.

“It needs a movement to create system change [and] the general public are integral to that movement,” he said. “We haven’t yet won over the public.”

Like Mr Bevan, whose fight for health equality was influenced by his experience of growing up in a South Wales mining town, Mr Sheen has been inspired to act by what he has witnessed happening in the town he was raised in.

A Port Talbot native, Mr Sheen has watched as the steel plant that community is so dependent on has shed jobs and cut pensions, leaving it residents financially - and mentally - vulnerable in the process.

Just as the NHS was set up so people could access healthcare regardless of circumstance, Mr Sheen wants to see the same happen in the low-cost credit space.

“The direction of travel must bend towards an ever-increasing fairness; nothing less is acceptable,” he said.

“Only when that is true do we know that the alliance is achieving what it is setting out to achieve.”

Just like driving the creation of the NHS was a mammoth task for Mr Bevan, making the End High Cost Credit Alliance a success is going to be no small task for Mr Sheen.

When giving the Aneurin Bevan Lecture at last year’s Hay Festival Mr Sheen said his hero was “a visionary, a disruptor and a bloody difficult man”.

It looks like he is going to have to be one too.