Banking bail-out: what £1.3tr could have bought

Let's draw up a wish-list. Let's imagine that the £1.3 trillion now committed by the government to bailing out the banks existed in the form of disposable cash. How might you choose to distribute that Everest of money?

A "super hospital" like the new Royal Derby Hospital costs about £250m. For a mere £10bn, therefore, the country could be provided with 40 such hospitals and the entire NHS could become the most modern and best-equipped health service in Europe. Currently, our position is roughly comparable with Poland's.

If it is built, the new Holland Park comprehensive will cost £72.5m, making it the most expensive state school in Britain. We could pay for 13 such magnificent schools for £1bn. For £50bn, we could afford one in every major town in the country.

Nearly 30 years have now elapsed since we were promised a high-speed rail network which would connect Scotland and North of England to the Channel Tunnel and provide a TGV service all the way to Marseilles. That failed promise could be delivered with a snippet of the £1.3 trillion.

A mere £32bn would pay for a network from London to the West Midlands, Liverpool and Manchester on a westerly branch and the East Midlands, Yorkshire, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh on an easterly branch, with new city centre stations.

In the context of a £1.3 trillion budget most projects will cost chicken feedFor a further £30bn, 15 major cities in Britain could be provided with light railway systems. A high-speed rail link between Glasgow and Edinburgh would cost £3bn. A new Forth Road Bridge would cost £4bn. What are those sums in the context of that £1.3 trillion commitment? Chicken feed.

If we spent the £60bn on the road system which the government promised but has failed to deliver, Britain would go from near the bottom of the European league for the provision of motorways to near the top. A south coast motorway from Poole to Dover has been in need of development for 30 years, as has a motorway from Salisbury to Plymouth. Now, at last, we could have them.

At £3m a mile, we could afford 1000 miles of new motorway and still have enough money left to resurface every inch of Britain's crumbling road surfaces.

The list can go on as long as you like. You can add anything you fancy. Nothing would be unaffordable. More generous pensions and improved healthcare for the elderly; new prisons; free university tuition; it's all possible. For £1.3 trillion - a sum of money equal to the entire GDP of the country - there is no limit to the social benefits we can have.

At some point, then, the penny might drop in the minds of the British public that the government is impoverishing the social fabric and committing future generations to mountainous liabilities in pursuit of a cause which - if the electorate had any choice - they almost certainly would not have supported.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have repeatedly declared that "the banking system cannot be allowed to fail". In the mind of the general public, this vivid and alarmist phrase is probably taken to mean that the government is protecting the country's essential interests by making sure that savings are protected, wages are paid and holes in the wall continue to dispense cash.

In truth, however, the government could provide this essential security and reassurance simply by extending an unlimited guarantee over deposits. It is not necessary - in order to ensure that a banking system continues to function - that the interests of shareholders in the banks should be assured, which is the prime function of the government's policy in committing and squandering a future British generation's entire social treasury.

For the last 30 years, British governments have relentlessly privatised profit. Now they are committed to socialising the oceanic losses which result from their own policies. There is a word for this kind of conduct. It is called misappropriation. It is a crime. ·