Public debt hits £ 800 billion-the highest on record

Britain is clocking up debt at a rate of £6,017 per second as the Government struggles to balance the books. With tax receipts plummeting because of the recession, state borrowing grew by £16.1 billion last month — almost twice the entire budget for the 2012 Olympics.
Net borrowing for the first five months of the financial year stood at £65.3 billion, compared with £26.1 billion at the same stage last year. Total borrowing soared past the £800 billion mark for the first time and total state debt as a proportion of national output reached 57.5 per cent.
Just to pay the interest on its ballooning debts the Government must find more than £30 billion a year — about £500 for every man, woman and child in the country.
The figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that tax receipts in August dived by 9 per cent compared with August 2008, while public spending rose by almost 3 per cent. The widening gulf was bridged by borrowing. Spending on benefits grew by £900 million to £13.5 billion as unemployment soared.
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Taking fright at the figures, foreign exchange dealers sent sterling diving to a four-month low against the euro. The value of the pound fell by more than 1 per cent against the dollar.
Analysts said that the Budget forecast by Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, that additional borrowings would be £175 billion this year was not pessimistic enough and predicted that borrowing would be between £15 billion and £50 billion above that forecast.
John Hawksworth, chief economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: “It seems likely that budget deficits will overshoot Treasury forecasts not only in 2009-10 but for years to come.”