The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) - which keeps tabs on government spending - said that borrowing would be £355,000,000,000 for the current financial year (April 2020 to April 2021), before falling back to £234,000,000,000 over the next year.

That's the highest figure ever seen outside wartime.

Where did the money go?

Over £100bn is being spent on support for jobs, such as the furlough scheme, where the government steps in to pay most of workers' wages. The NHS and other public services have been given extra money to pay for the costs of fighting the pandemic. With more money going out and less coming in, the government has only one option - to borrow.

Even if the pandemic ends quickly, there will still be higher costs and lower tax receipts in future years too. All of this means more borrowing.

Can the UK afford all this debt?

Until recently, the government has been able to borrow easily at very low interest rates, which has made its debt more affordable. At the moment it pays just 0.78% interest to borrow for 10 years.

Though it's still low, it has been rising recently - and the higher it goes, the harder it will be to support the UK's debt burden.

And in any case, interest payments will weigh on future generations until the debt is paid off, meaning there is less money available to spend on public services, or tax cuts.

Covid is going to radically change society as we knew it. Pandemics always have in the past, this will be no different.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52663523



The debt will (probably) still be there when I die .....

The debt will be there when our grandkids die Omah.
The national debt was perpetual and would never be paid off even before Covid took it off the scale....The UK and most of it's residents only survive on credit nowadays.

That's what I read, the UK debt before the pandemic was running at near 100% of GDP so you started at a very high base (there were countries in a worse situation such as Japan) but the pandemic added to that already pretty large debt.

With Brexit added on top there seems little likelihood of the UK running a surplus and paying off its debts anytime soon so personally I feel very pessimistic about the future of my young nieces, nephews and cousins who live there, they will be struggling for decades to come in my opinion.

I agree about the future, of not just the UK Bruce, and with or without further outbreaks of Covid, I believe it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.