Chancellor Alistair Darling is understood to be close to temporarily abandoning the Government's fiscal rules rather than changing them when he presents his pre-Budget report later this autumn, The Independent reports.
The UK's public borrowing will break through the £50bn mark in this financial year and the 40% ceiling on total debt will be breached in 2009. This means Mr Darling has to choose whether to abandon the rules temporarily, with a commitment to return to them within a specific period, or produce new fiscal rules. He has not made a final decision but sources say he is moving towards announcing a temporary suspension rather than rewriting the rules, as he has been advised that this would be more acceptable to the financial markets. JEREMY ISAACS, THE long-serving chief executive of Lehman Br...
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