Trade unionists branded Chancellor George Osborne’s cuts-based “recovery” a sham yesterday following a shock rise in government debt.

Borrowing rose sharply to £11.8 billion in September alone — 15 per cent higher than last year — after low pay saw the Exchequer’s tax take stagnate.

Trade union Unite general secretary Len McCluskey branded the figures “dismal.”

“Living standards are going through the floor because of a wage siege gripping households across the UK, while self-defeating austerity sucks money and demand out of the economy,” he stormed.

“This Tory-led government’s idea of recovery is giving tax cuts to rich while hitting the vulnerable and the working poor under the mantra of ‘work harder, get poorer’.”

Mr Osborne borrowed 10 per cent more in the five months to September than in the same period in 2013.

And government debt rose to £1.451 trillion — 79.9 per cent of GDP compared to 77.9 per cent a year earlier.

The official figures blew a hole in the Chancellor’s glowing report to his party conference last month, where he declared that “Britain is the fastest growing, most job-creating, most deficit-reducing of any major advanced economy on Earth.”

He was silent yesterday, but TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady challenged the Chancellor “to admit he got his strategy wrong.”

“Only a wages-led recovery can bring about the boost in demand that businesses need and the boost in revenue that the government needs,” she said.

Even City analysts endorsed the trade union position that Mr Osborne’s austerity policy has hit the buffers.

Chartered accountants body ICAEW spokesman Sumita Shah said the “grim” figures told a “different story” to Tory claims of recovery based on headline growth figures.

And economist Howard Archer confirmed that higher borrowing figures “largely reflect the fact that much weaker than expected earnings growth has limited income tax receipts, along with a large number of people now being in low-paid jobs or self-employed.”