Will Jeremy Hunt have scope to deliver more tax cuts before the next election? Tory MPs certainly hope so, as cuts to employee National Insurance in last year’s Autumn Statement and this month’s Budget have yet to move the polls. Something like an income tax cut, they think, would be preferable. But this morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics is an uncomfortable reminder that those kinds of tax cuts are hard to deliver: for as much as the government insists it wants to bring down the tax burden, it likes to spend money too.

Public sector net borrowing in February was £8.4 billion – significantly higher than the consensus of £5.8 billion. While some costs came in lower than the year before – debt servicing payments were £1.1 billion lower last month than they were in 2023 – those costs still remain significantly elevated from where they were before 2022.

But the real problem is that Britain can’t stop spending. Total expenditure in February this year rose to £89.6 billion – £2.9 billion more from the year before. It seems that regardless of whether the UK is experiencing or overcoming an economic shock, the government still finds a way to spend more. Capital Economics reports this morning that today’s figures indicate it is already likely that the Office for Budget Responsibility’s borrowing forecast linked to the March Budget is too optimistic.

One month’s borrowing figures (or indeed one year’s figures) do not necessarily preclude the government from offering up another tax cut. Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal rule requires debt as a percentage of GDP to be falling in only the fifth year of a rolling forecast. The problem for the Chancellor is that the ‘good news’ from this morning’s update is actually evidence of how misleading some of this tax cutting narrative has been: tax receipts actually rose in February by an additional £7.2 billion. It seems the public finances continue to be propped up, in part, by the stealth tax hikes brought in by this government through freezes to tax thresholds. Given how much the UK continues to borrow, if Hunt wants to offer up more tax cuts, it will likely involve some more manoeuvring so the tax burden doesn’t shift much at all.

Today’s figures also raise another round of questions about that fiscal rule, which shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves committed to keep in her Mais Lecture earlier this week. Today’s figures highlight its serious flaws: mainly that the rule can be met by suggesting spending cuts are coming down the road – but because of the rolling nature of the forecasts these cuts are never actually delivered. In the latest Budget, Hunt only meets his fiscal rule, according to the OBR, on the premise that he reverses the fuel duty freeze in the fifth year of the forecast (a political move no one ever believes will happen). In the meantime, debt only continues to surge upwards. According to this morning’s update, the debt sits at £2.42 trillion, hovering as a percentage of GDP at levels not seen since the 1960s.

Let’s not forget that one of this government’s five pledges at the start of last year was to get debt falling. Nothing of the sort has happened.