Dear Listener

I am told it was Glitches not Gremlins that stole last week’s newsletter. All I know is we sent it twice and it failed to arrive – twice. And even now a young Glitch is hard at work on his PhD thesis ‘A BBC newsletter: minor variants in two successive issues of the same date.’ Anyway, real fans (and I know you are out there) can read at least one version (it’s about the Budget) on my website paullewis.co.uk.

This week we are up to our necks in debt. Now this is not your ordinary couple of hundred quid overdraft, or a maxed out credit card groaning under £3500. Nor even that 100%, six times income mortgage. No. This is a debt of £1,279,000,000,000 – count the noughts – which is more than one trillion pounds. That is what the UK will owe by the end of the coming year. [Note for anoraks: that is how the Maastricht Treaty rules measure it. Our Treasury insists it will only be £952,000,000,000 and will take another year to reach a trillion]. But whatever the exact figure everyone agrees we will be borrowing about another half a trillion pounds (£500,000,000,000) over the next five years.

The reason is simple. Each year the Government is spending loads more money than it gets in from taxes. And before you say ‘why doesn’t it just stop?’ that money pays for state pensions to 12 million people, the National Health Service, defence, educating our children, the police, and so on. The one thing we may all not like is the £41.6 billion (close on £700 for every person in the UK) we will spend next year in interest on the debt we now have. But until we reduce the debt we cannot stop spending that. Indeed, as you will hear, it is set to rise over the next five years come what may (or come which in May).

Although the debt may be up to our necks Money Box will make sure it is not over our heads. I will take you on a journey to find out when this debt started (1272 under Edward I believe it or not), whether it matters (maybe), how much we must cut it (a credible amount), and how we might do that (fairly). Then I visit the City (technically Canary Wharf not the Square Mile) to ask – if I wanted to borrow half a trillion pounds who will lend it to me? Finally our live expert panel will discuss what effect this growing debt will have on our savings, investments and bank accounts and our own debts – which seem modest by comparison – on mortgages and credit cards.

That will be the whole programme this Saturday. China is still on our agenda for a future week quite soon. And if like me you are thinking of all the news stories this week that we are not covering (ISAs, care homes, etc) we will come back to some of them over the next few weeks.

Money Box is at noon on Saturday, nine pm on Sunday, or on the website www.bbc.co.uk/moneybox at any time. There you can also watch videos, follow up items, read web pieces, download transcripts, follow links, and send us stories or ideas you want us to look into. And of course Have Your Say, this week sending us your thoughts on – and solutions to – the £1,000,000,000,000 UK debt.

Best wishes,

Paul

PS Don’t forget the programme preview on Breakfast BBC 1 soon after 0845 on Saturday when I will actually be talking about one of those news items from this week.

e-mail Paul Lewis