Taxpayers cannot continue to dole out money to Northern Rock says Cable

10.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 4th Dec 2007

Northern Rock may have borrowed as much as £29 billion from the Bank of England since its crisis began, after a jump in loans last week, according to Bank of England data. Northern Rock is likely to have borrowed 2.7 billion pounds last week, up from an estimated 1.1 billion pounds in the previous week, the latest Bank of England balance sheet data showed on Thursday. That would be the biggest weekly loan for five weeks.

Acting Liberal Democrat Leader Vince Cable said "We are in desperate territory here. The amount of money being loaned weekly is increasing rather than decreasing. With the total now close to £30 billion, taxpayers cannot be expected to continue to dole out vast sums of money. Much of it appears to be unsecured and may end up going down the plughole. While no private bidder has been able to guarantee the return of taxpayers' money with interest in a set timeframe, the Government must seriously look at temporary nationalisation."