Ministers began reprivatising Lloyds yesterday, flogging off a £3.2 billion stake in the once failing bank.

Chancellor George Osborne hailed the sell-off as evidence that Britain was "turning the corner," but economists raised concerns that the banking sector was merely returning to the light-touch approach central to the severity of the financial crisis in the first place.

Investors snapped up the stock at 75p a share - just above the 73.6p average the Treasury paid in the £20.5bn bailout the bank at the height of the financial crisis.

The taxpayer's stake has been reduced from 38.7 per cent to 32.7 per cent, with no further sales for at least 90 days.

Mr Osborne said the sale eased the national debt by £586 million, based on a paper valuation of the shares on government books, though that figure is subject to Office for National Statistics approval.

The Tory Chancellor said: "This is another step in the long journey in putting right what went so badly wrong in the British economy."

But left economists warned that the fire sale would be bad for Britain in the long term.

Left Economics Advisory Panel co-ordinator Andrew Fisher said: "Lloyds was bailed out by the state, and propped up with public money.

"Now Lloyds has returned to profit, rather than maintaining a long-term income stream, it is being sold off for private profit.

"This is slaughtering a goose that lays golden eggs for a one-off fry-up, even leaving aside the government's criminal failure to use its public stake in the banks to change banking culture or invest in the public interest."

And the Socialist Economic Bulletin's Michael Burke warned that the sell-off was "a return to the system we had before."

"It's a drive by the government to bail out the most failing aspects of the private sector - that of light-touch regulation in the financial sector, while imposing austerity cuts for the rest of society.