£3.75bn of cuts

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude described the savings, confirmed by an independent audit, as "staggering".

"To put £3.75bn into context, it's equivalent to the salaries of 200,000 junior nurses, or 150,000 secondary school teachers, it could pay for several Whitehall departments, and it's about the same as the revenue derived from one penny of the basic rate of income tax.

Right, so to put the increased IMF subscription into context, it's the annual salaries of 490,000 junior nurses, or 368,000 secondary school teachers. Or HS2 is 907,000 nurses' salaries or 680,000 teachers'. Our national debt would pay for 50.7 million junior nurses. The cost of servicing our debt will shortly be 3.9 million junior nurses.