The Chief Secretary to the Treasury's response to ONS public sector finance
statistics for November 2023 is below.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said:
“It was right to spend billions protecting people during the
pandemic and the energy shock triggered by Putin’s invasion of
Ukraine, but we cannot leave our children and grandchildren to
pick up the tab.
“That’s why the Prime Minister has made reducing debt a top
priority. We are taking difficult decisions in the national
interest to control our borrowing needs and improve productivity,
so that we deliver the public services people need while keeping
inflation down.”
Additional information:
- We are on track with our plan to get debt falling. We
have doubled our headroom since March, from £6.5bn to
£13bn.
- Headline debt is now forecast to be 5.5 percentage points
lower as a proportion of GDP by the end of the forecast than
before policy decisions taken last Autumn.
- Borrowing will be lower this year, next year and on average
over the forecast, compared to March.
- Borrowing is forecast to fall from £128.3 billion in 2022-23,
to £123.9 billion this year, to £35.0 billion by 2028-29, a more
than £95 billion fall over the forecast. As a percentage of GDP,
borrowing is forecast to fall to the lowest level since
2001/02.
- There is £13.0 billion of headroom against the debt rule and
£61.5 billion against the borrowing rule in the target year
(2028-29).
