UK will have largest budget deficit of any G20 country

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted that the UK will have the largest budget deficit of all G20 countries in 2010.

After revising its estimates for the scale of government debt, the IMF now predicts that next year the UK will have a budget deficit of 13.3% of GDP, compared to 9.7% for the US.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said, "It’s now official - the debt crisis is worse in Britain than any other major economy.”

And he warned, “We now face a 100 per cent national debt and the humiliation of the first ever downgrade in Britain's credit rating, with all the higher debt costs that entails. Gordon Brown's denial of the truth about the debt crisis and the need to cut spending whoever wins the election is doing serious economic damage to Britain's recovery.”