Osborne: Lloyds sale will reduce national debt by £0.5bn

The Chancellor George Osborne has confirmed the government has sold 6% of Lloyds Banking Group at 75p a share.

"That is a profit for taxpayers and rightly so. The money will be used to reduce the national debt by over £0.5bn," he told the BBC.

And he played down Vince Cable's warnings of an unbalanced recovery: "You've had investors from around the world investing in a British bank - that's a sign that the British economy is turning a corner."