One of the biggest surprises in George Osborne’s Budget speech was his announcement that the deficit is forecast to fall this year (although excluding all “special factors” it’s actually set to rise). With borrowing so far this year £5.3bn higher than in 2012, it seemed there was no escape for the Chancellor.
For the first time since he entered the Treasury, he would be forced to announce that the deficit was expected to rise in annual terms and Ed Balls would have his revenge (Osborne memorably bamboozled the shadow chancellor in last year’s Autumn Statement by banking the 4G auction receipts early).
That the deficit is forecast to shrink by the minimum amount required for Osborne to claim that borrowing has fallen (£100m) is clear evidence that the underspend was motivated by political calculations, rather than economic ones.
As well as squeezing Whitehall spending, Osborne also saved money by, in the words of the OBR, delaying payments to some “international institutions” until next year. When I spoke to the Treasury press office, they cited the example of a £15m payment by the Department for International Development to Green Africa Power. The spokesman refused to confirm whether the institutions affected included the UN and the World Bank. Regardless, it is now clear that Osborne’s creative accounting puts Gordon Brown to shame.
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