page_title: United Kingdom national debt
section_title: Debt versus deficit
hierarchical_section_title: United Kingdom national debt / Debt versus deficit
caption_attribution_description: English: Graph showing breakdown of UK Government Expenditure 2016-17. Taken from page 5, Budget 2016 report, published 16 March 2016 by Her Majesty's Government. Accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508193/HMT_Budget_2016_Web_Accessible.pdf
context_page_description: The United Kingdom National Debt is the total quantity of money borrowed by the Government of the United Kingdom at any time through the issue of securities by the British Treasury and other government agencies.
  As of Q1 2018, UK debt amounted to £1.78 trillion, or 86.58% of total GDP, at which time the annual cost of servicing the public debt amounted to around £48 billion. Approximately a third of this debt is owned by the British government due to the Bank of England's quantitative easing programme, so approximately 1/3 of the cost of servicing the debt is paid by the government to itself, reducing the annual servicing cost to approximately £30 billion.
  Due to the Government's current budget deficit, the national debt is increasing. The Cameron–Clegg coalition government in 2010 planned that they would eliminate the deficit by the 2015/16 financial year. However, by 2014 they admitted that the structural deficit would not be eliminated until the financial year 2017/18.
context_section_description: The UK national debt is often confused with the government budget deficit (officially known as the Public Sector Net Cash Requirement (PSNCR)). For example, the then Prime Minister David Cameron was reprimanded in February 2013 by the UK Statistics Authority for creating confusion between the two, by stating in a political broadcast that his administration was "paying down Britain's debts". In fact, his administration had been attempting to reduce the deficit, not the overall debt; which continued to rise even as the deficit was reduced.
caption: Pie chart of UK central government expenditure, 2016–17. Debt interest is shown in dark green. Social protection includes Pensions and Welfare.[7]
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