Of course, Darling’s big forecasting error in the PBR was his claim that the UK economy would start recovering by the third quarter of this year. But, ahead of today’s Budget, it’s worth highlighting the borrowing forecasts he’s made. As Robert Peston indicates in his latest blog post, a year makes an awful lot of difference:
“In the last budget, a year ago, Alistair Darling projected public-sector net borrowing for 2009/10 of £38bn.
Come the autumn and his pre-budget report, he projected that net borrowing for that period would be more than three times greater, at £118bn.
And today, just a few months on, he’s expected to say he’s understated yet again the scale of what the public-sector needs to borrow – and that public sector net borrowing in the current fiscal year will be nearer to £180bn.”
Sure, the counterargument is that the Government didn’t foresee the recession, so it could hardly have foreseen the massive rise in borrowing that came with it.
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