UK borrowing at highest rate since the Second World War

As part of the chancellor's 2021 Budget announcement back in March, Rishi Sunak and the accompanying Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts revealed the extent to which the UK is having to borrow to support the economy through the coronavirus pandemic. Total spending on the country's pandemic support measures has already surpassed £300 billion, necessitating levels of borrowing not seen since the two world wars.

As this infographic shows, using the latest Office for National Statistics estimate, public sector net borrowing is now expected to hit 15.1 percent of GDP in the current financial year - a figure not seen since the end of the Second World War. This "unprecedented peacetime expansion in government spending" is intended though, as described in the OBR's March report, to "prevent an even more dramatic fall in output and diminish the potential longer-term adverse effects on the supply capacity of the economy."