{"id":185188,"date":"2025-10-08T10:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/185188\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T10:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:02:08","slug":"rachel-reeves-given-extra-3bn-for-budget-after-vat-error-fixed-government-borrowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/185188\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Reeves given extra \u00a33bn for budget after VAT error fixed | Government borrowing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mistakes in recent public finances data mean government borrowing has been overstated by a cumulative \u00a33bn, the Office for National Statistics<\/a> has announced.<\/p>\n

In a fillip that gives Rachel Reeves<\/a> a little bit more wriggle room in her November budget, the ONS said its estimates of public borrowing had been out by \u00a3200m-\u00a3500m a month since January.<\/p>\n

While a welcome development for the chancellor, the revision is the latest sign of deep problems with the quality of economic data in the UK that have piled pressure on officials<\/a> trying to get a clear picture to guide decision-making.<\/p>\n

In a notice published on Wednesday, the ONS blamed a mistake in the VAT receipts data supplied by the tax authorities for the errors in its most recent tax and spending figures that were published on 19 September.<\/p>\n

The mistake means cumulative public borrowing for the fiscal year ending March 2025 was \u00a31bn lower than the ONS had previously suggested \u2013 and so far this year, April-August, it is \u00a32bn lower.<\/p>\n

A table published alongside the error notice showed that public borrowing was still running ahead of the March forecasts from the Office for Budget<\/a> Responsibility (OBR) \u2013 but by less than previously estimated.<\/p>\n

August\u2019s borrowing figure of \u00a318bn has been changed to \u00a317.7bn, for example, which was \u00a35.2bn ahead of the OBR\u2019s estimates, instead of the \u00a35.5bn first stated.<\/p>\n

Full details will be incorporated in the next public finances data, due to be published on 21 October, the ONS said.<\/p>\n

Reeves is still expected to announce tax rises in her budget next month to plug a spending gap estimated at between \u00a320bn and \u00a340bn, amid an expected productivity downgrade by the OBR<\/a> and a series of policy reversals<\/a>, including scrapping plans for welfare cuts.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n

Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

HM Revenue and Customs acknowledged its mistake in a statement, saying it had \u201cidentified an error in our VAT cash receipts outturn which impacts provisional 2025 to 2026 year-to-date receipts\u201d, adding: \u201cVAT cash receipts from April 2025 to August 2025 have been increased by \u00a32.4bn.\u201d<\/p>\n

While HMRC<\/a> took responsibility for the error, it was the latest in a long line of revisions by the ONS, which has come under intense pressure over the reliability of its statistics since the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mistakes in recent public finances data mean government borrowing has been overstated by a cumulative \u00a33bn, the Office…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-185188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}