OUTGOING Bank of England deputy governor Charlie Bean’s declaration that the central interest rate could soon rise from its 0.5 per cent record low to 3 per cent will come as grim reading for millions of indebted people across Britain.

Mainstream economists argue that the concept that we are witnessing a “recovery” fuelled by new personal debt is flawed.

They point to figures showing a slight reduction in people’s unsecured borrowing — credit cards and personal loans — to say that there’s no repeat of the circumstances which fuelled the 2008 collapse of banking.

But economic statistics still reveal a continued heavy reliance on personal debt to make ends meet in our communities.

Over £800 million of new borrowing was taken out last September alone.

And while Chancellor George Osborne and co might trumpet the return of wafer-thin economic growth, the latest evidence coming from Citizens Advice underlines that either way for ordinary people “recovery” is a myth.

It again reports a big rise in the number of people turning to its advisers desperately struggling with the cruel burden of welfare attacks in the name of austerity.

And the prospect of an upward spiral in interest rates — hitting everything from record-low mortgages to credit cards — threatens to plunge yet more lives into desperate misery.

We must be careful about hyping up the prospects of a continued failed “official recovery.”

It is indeed quite possible that at the top, on the government’s chosen measure of GDP, Britain may continue to lurch forward in fits and starts.

The City might well be sitting even prettier.

The corporations might well continue making so much cash they don’t know what to do with it.

This is the likely face of a Tory “official recovery.”

But what this headline GDP figure does not show is whether ordinary people are, despite Con-Dem propaganda, anywhere near to feeling a positive change in their lives.

It is clear that the right-wing economic policies which this government is intent on pursuing will continue to punish the weakest the most in a vindictive social experiment designed by millionaires for millionaires.

Their vision is a low-wage, “flexible” economy for the many where easy profits can be racked up by the few, while beneath this precarious strata of workers a mass pool of unemployed is forced to fight for their very survival.

This economic backdrop will define the politics of the next few years and the society that Britain becomes.

Our focus must remain on the day-to-day social and economic impact of austerity, privatisation and free-market economics.

A recovery will only be a recovery when the gaping wounds slashed into our society by the right are fully healed.

GPs’ protests over plummeting funding in every nation are a warning that must be heeded.

Hardly a traditionally militant bunch, these high-street doctors are the canary in the mine on the trajectory of the NHS, even outside England where the worst excesses of the experiment-mad Tory Dr Frankensteins have been felt.

The cost-cutting regime being applied to various parts of our health service underlines once again the effect of the austerity-crazed ideologues at the top.

GPs’ decision to open a new front against cutbacks should be applauded.