Campaign group says milestone reached days after Government overshot borrowing forecasts.
Britain’s public debt is thought to have pushed past £3 trillion for the first time, according to new estimates from the TaxPayers’ Alliance, based on the recent pace of government borrowing.
The campaign group’s calculation follows official figures showing the Treasury borrowed £2.7 billion more than expected during the first quarter of the financial year, driven largely by rising debt-interest costs and welfare payments. On that trajectory, the group says the state is now taking on roughly £4,270 of new borrowing every second, around £369 million a day.
The estimate lands at an awkward moment for Chancellor John Healey, who has made restoring “fiscal discipline” a central pledge since taking the role.
John O’Connell, the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s chief executive, described the debt pile as “out of control” and called on Healey and Prime Minister Andy Burnham to curb spending. He argued that any new economic strategy from Burnham should not come “at the expense of future generations.”
Separately, Ruth Curtice, who now leads the Resolution Foundation after a career at the Treasury, has previously described the state of the public finances as being on a path that cannot be sustained indefinitely.
Where the figure comes from
Official statistics from the Office for National Statistics put net public debt at £2.99 trillion at the close of June. July’s numbers have not yet been released, but borrowing rose by more than £20 billion in the equivalent month last year – enough, if repeated, to tip the total over £3 trillion. The Office for Budget Responsibility had projected in the spring that the threshold would not be reached until September, meaning the milestone may have arrived earlier than officially anticipated.
At current levels, the debt load works out at over £100,000 for every household in the country and is close to 95% of national income.
Political reaction
The Conservatives placed the blame squarely on the governing party. Shadow chancellor Mel Stride accused ministers of continuing to borrow while public finances deteriorate, arguing that families would ultimately bear the cost, and claimed Labour’s plans involve borrowing more than a quarter of a trillion pounds beyond what it inherited.
Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick took a broader view, saying both main parties shared responsibility for the debt build-up, and noted that debt-servicing costs now exceed combined spending on education and defence.
A rapid third trillion
The scale of the increase is notable set against history. Britain took more than three centuries to accumulate its first £1 trillion of debt, a mark passed in 2010. The second trillion followed just over a decade later, in 2020, largely due to pandemic support spending. This latest trillion has been added in only six years, pushed up by measures including energy-related subsidies and a growing welfare bill.
Outlook
Burnham has said he intends to keep to the fiscal rules set by his predecessor Rachel Reeves, under which debt as a proportion of GDP must be falling within three years. He has, however, signalled interest in using built-in flexibility to increase spending — including a mechanism that would let the Government borrow up to an additional £9 billion a year for investment in infrastructure, housing and business incentives, by offsetting it against capital spending. Such borrowing would remain within the technical rules but would still add to overall debt and interest costs.
Debt interest payments are forecast to top £130 billion this year and rise beyond £160 billion annually by the end of the decade, according to OBR projections, which see total debt reaching close to £3.5 trillion by 2030-31, implying the pace of borrowing growth should slow from here.
A Treasury spokesman pointed to the OBR’s spring forecast, which shows debt falling as a share of GDP a year ahead of the fiscal rules’ requirement, and said: “Fiscal discipline is the bedrock of economic stability and national security. The Chancellor and Prime Minister are in lockstep that the Government will meet the fiscal rules – and that includes getting debt down.”
