Neil MacGillivray: The post-pandemic financial malaise

The Office of Budget Responsibility estimates the costs of a three-month lockdown to fund the likes of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, Self-Employment Income Support Scheme, business grants and tax deferral schemes will increase government borrowing for this year by £273bn. To put that into some sort of perspective, the total raised in taxes in 2018/19 was in the region of £620bn and current National Debt is, give or take a pound or two, £1.84trn. If we go back 15 years National Debt was a mere £0.5trn. In terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the National Debt in 2005 was abou...