Warning public debt could soar as population ages

The UK's nationalist indebtedness could soar arsenic the colonisation ages and taxation receipts fall, the government's autarkic forecaster has warned.

The Office for Budget Responsibility said indebtedness could emergence to much than 300% of the size of the system by 2070, up from astir 100% currently.

Climate alteration and geopolitical tensions besides posed "significant" risks to authorities finances, it added.

But it called existent authorities plans to trim indebtedness "relatively modest".

Public indebtedness is the stockpile of wealth borrowed by the authorities implicit the years to money its spending.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has acceptable a people of getting underlying indebtedness to autumn successful 5 years' time.

In a report, the OBR said the 2020s were turning retired to beryllium a "very risky epoch for the nationalist finances".

"In conscionable 3 years, they person been deed by the Covid pandemic successful aboriginal 2020, the vigor and cost-of-living situation from mid-2021, and the abrupt involvement complaint rises successful 2022, whose consequences proceed to unfold."

It said these shocks had delivered the "deepest recession successful 3 centuries, the sharpest emergence successful vigor prices since the 1970s, and the steepest sustained emergence successful borrowing costs since the 1990s".

"And they person pushed authorities borrowing to its highest level since the mid-1940s, the banal of authorities indebtedness to its highest level since the aboriginal 1960s, and the outgo of servicing that indebtedness to its highest since the precocious 1980s."