UK budget cuts have ‘averted a debt crisis’

The UK's debt management chief, Robert Stheeman, has declared that government austerity policies have given markets "a lot of reassurance" and helped to avoid a potential debt bond crisis.

Stheeman even went so far to say that the financial picture has "brightened so much" that government gilts have benefited from "safe-haven flows".

Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, has recently accused the Government of repeating Margaret Thatcher's austerity policy "mistake" after the 1979 oil shock, which drained the economy of £13bn in a VAT rise.

But Stheeman emphasised he was not sounding the all-clear: "We are conscious that we still have to issue very large sums of debt compared to a few years ago."

Read a full report at the Daily Telegraph. ·