With the Spring Budget now just mere days away, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has faced a fresh blow, after the Government was revealed to have borrowed £20billion more than expected.
The last financial year, up until February saw public spending reach £132billion, far exceeding forecasts and sending the country’s debt levels skyrocketing higher still.
Last month alone, borrowing was £10.7billion, a full £3.7billion ahead of the target of £7billion that has initially been predicted.
This means that the whole year’s borrowing is set to hit an eye-watering £151billion, £23billion higher than the October forecast, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
The financial think tank estimated this would be £63billion more than the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast a year ago —when the Conservative Party were still in power.
With debt levels and spending considerably higher than anticipated, this now places further pressure on Rachel Reeves ahead of Wednesday’s Spring Statement, in which she is set to unleash a raft of spending cuts to try and curb spiralling costs.
Amid this uncertainty, The Chancellor is also reportedly bracing for the OBR to drastically downgrade its economic growth forecast for the year, reports The Sun.
To make matters worse, the £9.9billion of headroom she banked on in her tax-raising Budget last Autumn has now been rendered virtually obsolete due to stubbornly high inflation costs.
This means that in order to adhere to her own self-imposed fiscal rules, it will be Whitehall department funding that now faces cuts in an effort to balance the books and get back on track.
Interestingly, it is believed Ms.Reeves will blame global uncertainties on the lacklustre growth outlook for the UK, in particular addressing the impact of recent events such as US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on numerous nations around the world.
Yet while Ms.Reeves is content to justify the economy’s poor growth with international events, many bosses have instead criticised her own policies for stalling growth, in particular the £40billion worth of tax hikes set to hit next month.
These hikes will place a “chokehold” on business output, claim critics – with Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride even going so far as to argue his opposition counterpart to “get a grip.”
However Labour’s Darren Jones, the chief Secretary to the Treasury hinted that changes hadn’t gone far enough, as he argued: “We must go further and faster to create an agile and productive state that works for people.”