By Sumeet Desai
LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) – Britain may have to relax its own fiscal rules after data on Friday showed public borrowing at record levels, threatening to breach the restrictions the government set itself on how much debt it can take on.
Public sector net borrowing for the first quarter of the financial year was 24.4 billion pounds ($48.60 billion) — the biggest quarterly figure since records began in 1946.
The current budget deficit for the period was 20.4 billion pounds, also a record high.
"Horrific, absolutely horrific. Net borrowing so far this financial year is almost 10 billion pounds above the same period last year, which suggests that the full year figure is going to be way, way above official government forecast," said Investec chief economist Philip Shaw.
As finance minister, Brown established two rules to govern public finances — that the government only borrows to invest over the economic cycle and that public debt be limited to a prudent and sustainable level, defined as 40 percent of GDP.
Public debt is running close to 40 percent and analysts say the government could break the limit as the economy is slowing and there is greater pressure to spend.
Friday's Financial Times newspaper said Treasury officials were privately working on plans to reform the rules and this could be announced in the pre-budget report in the autumn, and possibly allow for greater borrowing.
"We have not reached any decision on that," finance minister Alistair Darling said on BBC Radio, adding the government has long said the rules were kept under review.
He said government borrowing was still lower than in many other countries and that it was right that it should rise in a downturn.
However, suggestions that the government might be about to relax its rules to allow more borrowing spooked markets.
Sterling fell against the dollar and euro on investors' growing sense that the UK economy is facing severe headwinds and that the government is unable do much to support it.
"It calls into question the credibility of fiscal policy at a time when monetary policy looks to be unsustainable," said Adam Cole, global head of FX strategy at RBC Capital Markets, referring to interest rates which, at 5 percent, are crimping growth.
BANK OF ENGLAND DILEMMA
The difficulties facing monetary policy setters were further highlighted on Friday, with Bank of England Deputy Governor John Gieve saying the Bank needed to balance the prospects of slowing growth and increasing unemployment with rising inflation.
He also said he could not rule out a recession.
"The MPC will continue to assess the balance between the risks of higher inflation from the commodity cost shock and the downside risks to output (and to inflation in the medium term from the credit crunch," Gieve said.
While inflation hit 3.8 percent last month, nearly double the Bank's two percent target, the real economy is slowing fast.
Latest evidence of that came from the troubled housing market — Gross mortgage lending fell 3 percent in June to an estimated 23.8 billion pounds, a 32 percent decline from June 2007, the Council of Mortgage Lenders said on Friday.
Construction companies are already suffering. Kier Group <KIE.L> said on Friday it would axe around 350 staff, or 60 percent of its workers in its residential division. More than 4,000 job cuts have been announced by homebuilders this month.
A Treasury spokesman earlier said it had always said it would look at the fiscal rules again when the economic cycle ends. But it is not clear when the Treasury will rewrite its rules since dating economic cycles is not an exact science.
Officials are waiting for the Office for National Statistics to produce its "Blue book" revisions at the end of September to get a better idea of when the current cycle might end. There has been speculation it may have ended in the second half of 2006.
While that clearly increases the pressure on the government to adjust the rules to increase borrowing, the ONS revisions could also increase the level of GDP significantly and thus give it extra margin without changing the fiscal rules.
