LONDON: Britain’s national debt is the eighth highest in the European Union and worth a staggering £64,000 per household, official figures showed today.
The UK now owes a total of £1.6trillion – that is £1,600,000,000,000 – or 88.5 per cent of national income despite years of austerity.
The report, from European statistics agency Eurostat, found only seven countries in the EU in a worse state than Britain – including basket cases such as Greece and Cyprus.
Critics described the debt mountain racked up by successive UK governments as a ‘ticking time-bomb’ and said it would be ‘immoral’ to hand the problem over to the next generation.
The figures underlined the scale of the task still facing George Osborne as he battles to balance the books and bring Britain’s debts back under control.
The Chancellor this week ordered Whitehall departments to draw up plans to slash up to 40 per cent from their budgets as he looks for savings of £20billion by 2019-20.
He said the further savings – which follow the £12billion of welfare cuts and nearly £6billion of tax rises announced in the Budget – will complete the Conservatives’ plan to return Britain to the black by the end of the decade.
