The latest borrowing figures for the public sector have been released, and they show that George Osborne continues to be not particularly good at achieving his stated aim of deficit reduction.
Public sector net borrowing — the accounting name for what is usually called the deficit — was £15.4bn in December 2012, £0.6bn higher than it was in December 2011. This still leaves the cumulative deficit for the financial year 2012/13 on target to be considerably lower than it was for the financial year 2011/12 (£78.5bn compared to last year’s £99.3bn), but success of deficit reduction has been reduced again. That figure, however, takes into account the windfall revenue from the transfer of the Royal Mail pension scheme. Excluding that windfall, the deficit would be £7.2bn higher this cumulative year than last.
In addition, and crucially, the last quarter of financial year 2012/13 is expected to see the transfer of profits from the Bank of England’s quantitative easing program and the proceeds of the 4G spectrum auction — both of which are subject to political controversy, and both of which are expected to lead to sizeable reductions in the 2012/13 deficit. The 4G auction led to upset around the time of the autumn statement, when the Chancellor brought forward the revenue from it in order to be able to claim to be reducing the deficit; while the transfer of QE profits was called by our economics editor David Blanchflower a “smash-and-grab” raid on the Bank of England (even if it may not have been that bad in hindsight). The ONS concludes:
the transfers from the BEAPFF [the QE transfer] will reduce [the deficit] by £11.5 billion… the sales of the 4G spectrum will reduce [the deficit] by £3.5 billion.
Both of those are also windfall revenue, in the classic sense: the chancellor can’t claim any fiscal prudence by pointing to the revenue they raise, since they will come once and only once. (And the latter, at least, might well turn out to be fiscal imprudence, if the Treasury ends up having to pay back more than it appropriated.)
The failure to cut the deficit may not be a bad thing, of course. If the economy is suffering from a paucity of aggregate demand, then the government cutting spending as fast as it wanted to would be terrible. Even while the government has been slashing public services, its inability to promote even minimal growth has meant that automatic fiscal stabilisers — things like means-tested and out-of-work benefits — have caused the resultant deficit reduction to be minimal. Keynesians should thank George Osborne for being so ineffectual at achieving the goal he has staked his political career on. His own party might not be quite so forthcoming.
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