BROWN'S BANK BAIL-OUT SENDS DEBT SOARING TO £92,000 FOR EACH FAMILY

National debt has hit the limit of the range expected by the ONS.

Treasury officials said the liabilities of the bank bail-outs were added for classification purposes. They said taxpayers would not be hammered with the full amount because the Government was aiming to sell off its stake in the banks.

Officials said the ONS balance sheet only takes into account the liabilities of state-owned banks like Northern Rock and not their assets.

Taxpayers would only pick up the bill if every single loan on the banks’ books went bad.

But the measures taken added an extra £4.7billion to net borrowing in 2008 and a ­further £3.3billion in the first three quarters of this year – mainly from the extra money the Government needed to finance its intervention.

In April, Chancellor Alistair Darling expected moves to prop up the banks would amount to a £50billion bill for the taxpayer.

He now expects to revise this figure down in his forthcoming Pre-Budget statement.

A Treasury spokesman said: “The Government’s interventions to support financial stability are temporary and exceptional and the liabilities of the banks who have been supported do not represent the long-term cost of these interventions to the taxpayer.

“In the Budget, the Government estimated the long-term cost would be between £20billion and £50billion and the top of this range was included in our fiscal projections.”