UK undershoots annual borrowing target by £700m
The UK government budget came in below its annual borrowing target by £700m, official figures show – but the Iran war is likely to blow a hole in Rachel Reeves’s carefully calculated fiscal “headroom” over the coming months.The government borrowed a net total of £132bn for the financial year ending in March, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.This slightly undershot the £132.7bn that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had forecast just last month.The total was £19.
8bn less than the £151,9bn borrowed in the previous financial year, after rounding, although was still the sixth highest on record,“The headline numbers coming in lower than the OBR’s expectations for the year as a whole will be a welcome boost to the chancellor,” Elliott Jordan-Doak, a senior UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said,For the month of March, public sector net borrowing – the difference between spending and income – was £12,6bn, which was £1.
4bn lower than a year earlier and the lowest since March 2022.City economists had expected the March figure to be £10.3bn.The annual figure was better than economists had expected after upward revisions for the previous two months.January’s record-breaking surplus was revised up to £32.
2bn, while government borrowing in February was revised down from £14.3bn to £12.8bn.James Murray, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “Our deficit is down £19.8bn because of our plan to cut borrowing.
In a volatile world the decisions we are taking are the right ones to keep costs down, take back our energy security and cut borrowing and debt.”Reeves announced £26bn in tax rises in her budget in November to lower debt and offset rising government spending on public services and upgrades to the UK’s infrastructure.She has implemented a fiscal rule that requires the government to fund day-to-day spending with taxes by the end of the parliament.The government’s day-to-day spending rose by £65.6bn or 6.
4% in the year to March..The ONS said that tax receipts for central government rose by £54.7bn to £845.4bn.
This includes increases of £34.6bn in income tax, £8.8bn in VAT and £5.4bn in corporation tax receipts.Changes to the rate of national insurance contributions, which came into effect in April last year, also bought in an extra £33bn to reach £206.
8bn.However, in a sign people are perhaps using their cars less to cut down on petrol and diesel usage amid rising costs, the amount collected in fuel duty in March was the lowest for any month since July 2023.Reeves has made reducing government borrowing a priority, with the national debt hitting 93.8% of of gross domestic product in March, a level not seen since the early 1960s.The cost of servicing that debt is high.
The ONS said the interest payable on government debt increased by £12,2bn to £97,6bn for the financial year, although was down in March to £3,2bn compared to £4,5bn in the same month last year.
In February, the chancellor announced that her buffer – or headroom – to meet this rule by 2030 had increased in its latest projections to £23.6bn, from £21.7bn at the time of the November budget.However, the conflict in the Middle East is expected to jeopardise this headroom, with rising inflation and potential job cuts as well as higher interest rates eating into this target.Ruth Gregory, the deputy chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said: “We do not expect this improvement to last long.
We think the energy price shock will mean that borrowing overshoots the OBR’s forecast by a huge £29bn for the 2026-27 fiscal year and by about £13bn in subsequent years.”The Resolution Foundation has forecast that a worsening Middle East conflict could deal a £16bn hit to the UK’s public finances by 2030, wiping out nearly three-quarters of Reeves’ headroom.
AI hallucinations found in high-profile Wall Street law firm filing
The elite Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell has told a court that a major filing it made in a high-profile case contained errors resulting from hallucinations generated by artificial intelligence.Andrew Dietderich, the co-head of the firm’s global restructuring group, apologised in a letter to the New York federal judge Martin Glenn on Saturday for the string of mistakes, which included inaccurate citations.The errors, uncovered by the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner (BSF), which was also working on the case, included misquoting the US bankruptcy code and citing cases incorrectly in a filing made on 9 April.In multiple instances, S&C, which employs more than 900 lawyers and has one of the top reputations for corporate work in the US, filed inaccurately summarised conclusions made in other cases using AI.“We deeply regret that this has occurred,” said Dietderich in the letter
‘An element of exploitation’: the world of TikTok child skincare influencers
In a TikTok video a young girl – her age anywhere between 10 and 15 – sits unboxing package after package of products she says were sent to her by skincare brands. She calls it a “PR haul”.In another video, a 16-year-old opens a box of products she received from a well known brand. She says: “I know I have younger people watching,” before reading out a note from the brand that says: “Can’t wait for you to share your thoughts.”This is the rapidly growing world of children’s skincare, in which online influencers as young as 13 accept free products from brands and promote them to their followers
UK could face ‘hacktivist attacks at scale’, says head of security agency
The UK could face “hacktivist attacks at scale” if it becomes embroiled in a conflict and the impact could be similar to recent high-profile ransomware incidents, according to the head of the country’s online security agency.Richard Horne, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), will warn today that nation states now account for the most significant incidents the NCSC deals with.“Were we to be in, or near, a conflict situation, the UK would likely face hacktivist attacks at scale. With similar effects and sophistication to the ransomware attacks we see today. But … no option to pay a ransom to help recover,” the NCSC chief will say in a speech on Wednesday opening the annual CyberUK conference in Glasgow
Rental platform unnecessarily collected the data of millions of Australians, privacy commissioner finds
An online rental platform has been urged to stop collecting users’ personal information after the Australian privacy commissioner found the gathering of “excessive” data compounded the vulnerability of tenants amid the housing crisis.RentTech platforms are increasingly used by real estate agents in Australia for people applying for rental properties to submit applications and supporting documentation. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute has identified 57 different rent platforms operating in Australia.An Ahuri report released in January found while providing personal information is necessary for rental agreements, the “over-collection of data poses significant risks to renters’ data security and privacy”.In a first-of-its-kind determination against one of the platforms, published on Wednesday, the privacy commissioner, Carly Kind, found 2Apply, operated by InspectRealEstate, had collected excessive personal information in an unfair manner
Apple’s Tim Cook leaves behind complicated legacy on privacy
In his 15 years as Apple’s top executive, Tim Cook has projected an image of the company as a champion of privacy rights. As he prepares to leave that role in September, that legacy has come back into focus. Cook trumpeted the iPhone maker’s commitment to privacy at home in the US and the EU, calling privacy “a fundamental right” but his acquiescence to government demands abroad call his dedication to protecting users into question.Cook cemented Apple’s pro-privacy reputation in 2015 when he resisted the FBI’s demands to unlock the iPhone of a mass shooter in San Bernardino, California. The company played up that public image in 2019 with playful ads that read, “Privacy
‘I’ll key your car’: ChatGPT can become abusive when fed real-life arguments, study finds
ChatGPT can escalate into abusive and even threatening language when drawn into prolonged, human-style conflict, according to a new study.Researchers tested how large language models (LLMs) responded to sustained hostility by feeding ChatGPT exchanges from real-life arguments and tracking how its behaviour changed over time.One expert not connected with the study described it as “one of the most interesting ever done into AI language and pragmatics”.Dr Vittorio Tantucci, who co-authored the research paper with Prof Jonathan Culpeper at Lancaster University, said their research found AI mirrored the dynamics of real-world disputes.“When repeatedly exposed to impoliteness, the model began to mirror the tone of the exchanges, with its responses becoming more hostile as the interaction developed,” he said
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