Britain's post-Covid debt pile grows at faster pace than all but one EU nation

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Slugging economic growth and surging borrowing costs add to UK's debt burden

Article originally published by The Telegraph. Hargreaves Lansdown is not responsible for its content or accuracy and may not share the author's views. News and research are not personal recommendations to deal. All investments can fall in value so you could get back less than you invest.

Published by

01 Aug 2023

Britain’s debt pile has expanded at a faster pace than any EU country apart from France since the pandemic began, official data shows.

The UK’s government debt has surged from 85.5pc of gross domestic product (GDP) in the last three months of 2019 to 100.5pc in the first three months of this year, a jump of 15 percentage points, the Office for National Statistics said.

By contrast, across the EU, the debt burden rose from 77.5pc of GDP to 83.7pc over the same period – an increase of only 6.2 percentage points, less than half the increase recorded in the UK.

It means that the UK’s debt pile grew at a faster pace than all EU nations, apart from France where the growth post-Covid debt-to-GDP ratio was the same as Britain’s. However, France’s overall burden was much larger, at 112.4pc of GDP at the start of the year.

A toxic cocktail of high government borrowing during the pandemic, sluggish UK economic growth and soaring borrowing costs mean the gap between Britain and