Britain has sunk into a pit of debt which is five times deeper than previously feared, with the country now owing the equivalent of £200,000 per household.
Instead of the £1 trillion reading normally presented as the nation's debt, the UK is in the red by closer to £5 trillion, figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal.
The oft-quoted £903bn figure for public sector net debt is a borrowing sum calculated by the ONS according to international standards.
But a broader set of ONS figures taking in Government liabilities show unfunded public service pension obligations could add another £1.2 trillion and liabilities in unfunded state pension schemes a further £1.35 trillion.
The Government's stakes in RBS and Lloyds account for an extra £1.5 trillion - leaving a debt mountain of £4.953 trillion once public sector net debt is added in.
The sum is almost four times the size of the UK's total gross domestic product in 2009.
Aileen Simkins, director of economic, labour and social analysis at the ONS, told Jeff Randall Live the data represented a "total balance sheet, looking at a wide range of liabilities".
As such they paint a more realistic - and starker - picture of the UK finances.
Mike Warburton, tax partner at accountants Grant Thornton, told Jeff Randall Live: "If I told you you're mortgage had just gone up by £200,000 you'd have a bit of a shock - but for the average household that is essentially what we're looking at in terms of the overall debt once you've taken it all into account."
Mr Warburton said it was unfair to count the bank stakes as liabilities as the assets could well turn a decent profit for the Government.
But he said the scale of pension liabilities was "the real killer".
"We're telling you the figures as they are at the moment, but.... we have an ageing population and in particular we've got a bulge of people - the so called baby boomers - born after the war and that bulk of the population is moving from the working population progressively into the retired population.
"The so-called dependency ratio... is going to move up over the next 30 years from about 25% to 45%.
"So if you think it's bad now, it is going to get worse. And I think the tragedy is this is a problem that's been known about for a long time."
Mr Warburton hailed the ONS' openness in presenting the data - but hit out at past governments for not facing up to the true scale of the debt problem.
"All governments (massage figures) and I don't want to be too political about it... but I'd have to say Gordon Brown was a past master at it - he was a master in stealth taxation and he was a master in making the numbers look the right way.
"Now you could say that's just clever accounting. On the other hand, I'm a great believer in transparency.
"We need to know what the figures are, and then at least we can tackle it."
From: news.sky.com
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