Britain sank into the red by £16.2billion last month during the worst September for public sector borrowing on record, official figures revealed today.

The higher-than-expected figure was announced just hours before Chancellor George Osborne was due to reveal one in ten public sector workers will lose their jobs in the bloodiest spending cuts since the Second World War.

Millions more will be told to take a pay cut or reduce their hours as George Osborne ushers in four years of pain today.

Today's figures left the UK's net debt at £842.9 billion - a record 57.2 per cent of GDP. Borrowing for the first six months of the current financial year now stands at £73.5 billion, the Office of National Statistics added.

The Chancellor is pinning his hopes on the private sector creating hundreds of thousands of jobs as he sets out plans to repair the battered public finances.

State workers, who currently account for one in five of the workforce, are bracing themselves for compulsory redundancies, vacancies left unfilled and recruitment freezes.

The public sector, welfare, tax credits and the Home Office and Ministry of Justice will all take the strain of paying off Britain's record budget The action comes as the Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King last night warned that Britain's 'nice' decade of low inflation and solid economic growth will now be replaced by a 'sober' decade.