The UK's budget deficit is set to see "an absolutely colossal increase to a level not seen in peacetime", the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said. The economic impact of coronavirus was likely to push the deficit to as high as £260bn, Paul Johnson told the BBC. He was speaking after latest figures showed that the deficit hit £48.7bn in the 2019-20 financial year. But Mr Johnson said those figures were "the numbers before the storm". The deficit last year - the gap between the government's income and its expenditure - was £9.3bn higher than in the 2018-19 financial year and equivalent to 2.2% ... (full story)