Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, has countered accusations that he had lost control of Britain's public finances the day after he announced a huge rise in borrowing.
Mr Brown told BBC television and radio his government's big spending plans for health and education were costed and paid for all the way up to 2008 and that he was not taking a big gamble.
"I am prudent about the nation's finances. That's why we build in cautious assumptions . . . based on a very accurate and precise examination of what's happening in the economy," he said.
Mr Brown announced in his annual pre-budget report yesterday that public sector net borrowing would come in at £37 billion in the current fiscal year, £10 billion higher than he had forecast back in April. Over the next five years he plans to borrow an extra £34 billion in total.
But Mr Brown said: "We have had to spend more on Iraq and the war on terror than we had expected . . . and we expected average earnings to rise a bit faster, but they did not, so that means less tax revenue."
But he refused to be drawn on whether taxes would have to rise again. "I can't make these forecasts or predictions." He added: "Our spending plans, in spite of all these difficult economic circumstances, are affordable."
Many economists suspect that, barring a strong upturn in tax receipts over the next few years, Mr Brown will have to raise taxes sometime after the next election - expected in 2005 - if he is to continue to meet his own fiscal rules.
Mr Brown also repeated his prediction that the British economy - the world's fourth largest - would enjoy stronger growth in the coming months.