As George Osborne awaits the verdict of the IMF on his great austerity experiment at 12pm, the latest borrowing figures are being written up as a positive for the Chancellor. The deficit for April came in at £6.3bn, around £2bn lower than expected, and public sector net borrowing for the previous year (2012/13) was revised down from £120.6bn to £119.5bn (compared to a deficit of £120.9bn in 2011/12).
But dig deeper into the data, and the picture isn’t so positive for Osborne. Once the effects of the transfer of the Royal Mail Pension Plan and the QE coupons from the Bank of England are stripped out, the deficit stood at £10.2bn last month, £1.3bn higher than the previous year. As last month’s dramatic welfare cuts showed, there’s been no shortage of austerity. But the government is still borrowing more than in 2012. As for the national debt, which David Cameron falsely claimed the coalition was “paying down”, that now stands at £1.2trn, or 75.2 per cent of GDP.
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