The article stated he was going to borrow an additional £75 billion over the next five years - he has borrowed an additional £7 billion, bringing it up to £75 billion.
£68 billion difference.
The article implied that this was an additional £75 for the next five years, not comparing it to something he said in 2010.....
Also, the "
new, bleak fiscal forecast from the OBR" - did they mean the
ones that stated
Quote:
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On our central forecast, the Coalition Government is on track to meet its fiscal mandate – to borrow only what it needs to pay for investment, adjusting for the state of the economy, at the end of the five-year forecast – with £50.6 billion to spare. This implies an 80 per cent probability of success given the accuracy of past forecasts. It remains on course to miss its supplementary target, to have net debt falling as a share of GDP in 2015-16. Net debt is forecast to rise by 0.8 per cent of GDP in that year, where it peaks at 81.1 per cent
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It's not good that we aren't going to meet the supplementary target, but not sure how meeting the main target is "bleak".....
Some more 'bleak' snippets from the report (which also shows some negative points as well).
In headline terms, the UK economy has outperformed our March forecast, with GDP expected to grow by 3.0 per cent this year and unemployment already down to 6.0 per cent.
GDP has increased more strongly this year than we expected in March, which has led us to increase our forecasts for growth in calendar years 2014 and 2015
We have also revised our inflation forecast down significantly, due to lower-than-expected outturns in recent data and the effects of lower oil and food prices. We now expect CPI inflation to remain below the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target until 2017. Meaningful real wage growth is expected to resume in 2015, although the measure of real earnings in our forecast does not return to its pre-crisis level within the next five years
On the Government’s latest plans and medium-term assumptions, we are now in the fifth year of what is projected to be a 10-year fiscal consolidation. Relative to GDP, the budget deficit has been halved to date, thanks primarily to lower departmental spending (both current and capital) and lower welfare spending.
In our first formal assessment, we judge that the Government is on course to keep spending on social security and tax credits (excluding the state pension and those benefits that vary most with the state of the economy) within the permitted margins of the ‘welfare cap’ it set in the Budget.
And for a bit of light relief...
Quote:
Parliament requires that our forecasts reflect the current policies of the current Government, but those policies could change. The two member parties of the Coalition have already said that they would follow different policies if either was to govern alone after the election. The Conservatives have said they would look to cut welfare spending by more, so that they could cut public services by less. And the Liberal Democrats have said that they would be willing to borrow more to finance capital spending that would increase growth, and also to increase taxes on the relatively well-off.
Labour has said that it would "balance the books and deliver a surplus on the current budget and falling national debt in the next Parliament. How fast we can go will depend on the state of the economy and the public finances we inherit."
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