Britain's deficit just keeps growing

The government has kept up its borrowing in order to bridge the gap created by falling tax income.

Another month, another disappointing British public-borrowing figure. In September the government borrowed £11.8bn to bridge the gap between tax revenue and spending compared to £10.3bn in September 2013.

Borrowing has exceeded last year's figure in all six months of the 2014-2015 fiscal year so far. We are already at the £58bn mark, 10% more than last year. In March 2014, official forecasts had expected the annual deficit to fall by 12% in 2014-2015.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.