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Brown's rule broken as national debt set to reach £1,020bn
BORROWING Britain's national debt will reach £1,020bn by 2012-13 – 57.1 per cent of gross domestic product.
It shatters Gordon Brown's old "sustainable investment" rule that debt should be no more than 40 per cent of GDP.
With a further rise to 1,084bn projected the following year – the figures show a doubling of debt since last year's total of 526bn. In all, Mr Darling is planning to borrow 434bn over the next five years – on top of the 77.6bn he is borrowing this year.
The Tories said that this year's total alone was more than the 60bn, at today's prices, which Winston Churchill borrowed from the United States to pay for the Second World War.
Borrowing is due to peak next year at 118bn – three times the 38bn the Chancellor was predicting at the time of the Budget only last March.
After that, borrowing will only come down slowly over the next couple of years before dropping, if the Chancellor's predictions are correct, to 54bn in 2013-14.
Mr Darling said it was right to relax rules on public borrowing.
"In the current circumstances, to apply the rules in a rigid manner would be perverse and damaging," he said. "We would have to take money out of the economy, making a difficult situation worse."
He said debt should start falling again as a proportion of GDP from 2015-16.
However, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said that in order to pay back the borrowing, Mr Darling had placed "a huge unexploded tax bombshell" timed to go off just as the economy was supposed to be picking up.
Government Borrowing:
This year - 78bn
2009 - 118bn (8% GDP)
2010 - 105bn
2011 - 87bn
2012 - 70bn
2013 - 54bn
National debt:
Rise from 41%GDP to 48% GDP 2009/10
53% 2010/11
Up to 57% by 2013/14
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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