banks) in £billions In 1997 the Labour government of
Tony Blair inherited a PSNCR of approximately £5 billion per annum, but by sticking to the parsimonious spending plans of the outgoing Conservative Government, this was gradually turned into a modest budget surplus. Labour began to pursue a looser fiscal policy following the 2000
Spending Review, and they started to run an annual deficit from January 2002. This cash requirement reached £43.935 bn in September 2005 before declining to £23.916 bn in September 2007. Even excluding bank interventions, the PSNCR then climbed through the
Great Recession to peak at £206.116 bn in August 2009 and dropped to £71.135 bn in April 2014.
Coalition government policy was to bring down the PSNCR to zero within the lifetime of the 2010–2015 parliament. In his budget speech in March 2011
Chancellor of the Exchequer,
George Osborne stated that "Our fiscal mandate is to achieve a cyclically-adjusted current balance by the end of the rolling five year forecast period – which is currently 2015–16" but having failed to do this by 2015 his revised aim was to balance the books by 2020. Following the departure of George Osborne, his replacement
Philip Hammond dropped the goal of eliminating the budget deficit, giving himself leeway to help the economy cope with the slowdown expected as Britain prepares to
leave the European Union. ==See also==