{"id":485548,"date":"2026-03-20T09:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T09:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/485548\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T09:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T09:08:10","slug":"warning-jump-in-uk-borrowing-makes-energy-bill-help-harder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/485548\/","title":{"rendered":"Warning jump in UK borrowing makes energy bill help harder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nabil Taleb, economist at PwC UK, said the increase in borrowing for February &#8220;partly reflects the timing of payments, with some interest due at the end of January falling into February because of the intervening weekend&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The leap to the second highest borrowing for February on record, a number not adjusted for inflation, is a sharp change from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c93w4egd3gzo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the record surplus in January<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lindsay James, investment strategist at Quilter, said there were some &#8220;glimmers of hope that government borrowing was beginning to be reined in as tax rises helped to create the largest January surplus on record&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The latest data out this morning, however, has put a swift end to that picture,&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">James said the about-turn in public sector finances was &#8220;largely due to record levels of interest payable, highlighting the sheer scale of debt interest the government is now facing&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Around \u00a31 in every \u00a310 is still currently spent on debt interest, which ministers said needed to be addressed so more could be spent on policing, schools and the NHS.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The ONS provisionally estimated the amount of government debt to be at 93.1% of the size of the UK economy at the end of February 2026, which means it remains at levels last seen in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nabil Taleb, economist at PwC UK, said the increase in borrowing for February &#8220;partly reflects the timing of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-485548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485548","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=485548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}