In the five months to August the UK Government has borrowed £61.3m. That equates to 26.7pc MORE than in the same period last year. The official borrowing target for the whole year is an increase of just 0.5pc.

Economists said the scale of the current overshoot, which has been caused by falling tax receipts and rising spending, is so large that the Chancellor will not be able to claw it back in the final seven months.

Both the British Chambers of Commerce and the CBI expect the Government to borrow £20bn more than planned this year, while IHS Global Insight UK economist Howard Archer said that “if this trend were to continue, borrowing would come in at £25bn above target”.

The bleak picture on borrowing, which is on course to rise sharply despite a HUGE £18bn of austerity this year, threatens to undermine the Chancellor’s fiscal rules. “It is likely in his autumn statement that he will either have to acknowledge that he will be unable to start bringing down debt as a percentage of GDP by 2015/16,” Mr Archer said.

Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has also suggested that the debt reduction target will be missed, but he claimed that abandoning the pledge would be “acceptable” as long as it was due to a slowdown in global growth.

In August alone, borrowing hit £14.41bn, up from £14.37bn in August last year. Slick talking Brit MP’s can’t deny these frightening figures which show what is really happening.