We pay £8m an hour just to service our debts

BRITAIN plunged deeper into the red last month as the country was forced to pay £8million an hour servicing the mammoth national debt.

Bleak figures published on the eve of the Budget showed Government borrowing was £8billion – £500million more than in October last year. The deterioration in the public finances came as debt interest payments jumped by 25 per cent to £6billion, around £8million an hour.

The spiralling cost of servicing the national debt – which now stands at a record £1.79trillion having tripled since the turn of the century – is leaching muchneeded resources from Britain’s creaking public services.

The deficit – the difference between what the Government spends and how much it receives in taxes – has fallen sharply, from a record £152.5billion in 2009-10 under Labour to £ 5.7billion last year. Borrowing so far this year has totalled £38.5billion, £ .1billion less than in the same period last year.

But the Chancellor is facing a barrage of demands for extra cash. Howard Archer, chief economic advisor to the Ernst & Young Item Club, said Mr Hammond is ‘getting squeezed on both sides’.