The Government’s stake in Urenco, which owns nuclear fuel plants in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, will be sold off to help to repay the country’s escalating debt mountain, the Prime Minister will announce today.

Gordon Brown will also announce plans to sell off the Dartford Crossing, the Channel Tunnel and the Tote and will signal that he is restarting the privatisation of the Student Loan book, which was shelved in March because of poor market conditions.

The Times revealed during the Labour Party conference that the Government believes that asset sales by central and local government could raise £16 billion.

Mr Brown will warn that government needs to keep investing or risk a “Japanese-style” downturn: “A reduction in growth of 1 per cent next year would raise the deficit by 0.5 per cent next year and even more in subsequent years, adding to the future debt burden. The resulting impact on the debt burden could be more than 5 per cent of GDP after ten years.”

The plan to sell off the Government’s one-third stake in Urenco could be the most controversial. The stake is controlled by the Shareholder Executive, which was created in 2003 to better manage the Government’s performance as a shareholder in businesses. The other two thirds are owned by the Dutch Ultra-Centrifuge Nederland and German Uranit.

Downing Street sources said that the sale would be subject to national security considerations, which could lead to the Government maintaining a small interest in the company or other restrictions placed on the sale.

According to Downing Street, many of the sales are expected to be completed over the next two years.

The Government will also sell surplus real estate that is part of the £220 billion portfolio owned by departments and agencies and which can be packaged up for sale as market conditions improve.

The Prime Minister will also set out how the the Government plans to use privatisations to get the national finances back in the black.

“The Government has set out the detailed tax measures that underpin this deficit reduction programme, which, on the cautious assumptions we have set out, will raise around £13 billion extra by 2013-14.

“We will also intensify our attack on tax evasion and tax havens. We have already announced that we will get £1 billion in extra tax receipts from our agreement with Liechtenstein alone. And HMRC have served enforcement notices on 100,000 offshore accounts held at 300 different institutions. While similar agreements with other countries are expected to bring in equivalent amounts in unpaid tax.”

Mr Brown will say that the UK is one of only three G7 countries to set out plans to halve its deficit over four years.

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