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The British government had a 20.3 billion-pound ($33 billion) budget deficit in November, the largest since records began in 1993, pushing national debt above 60 percent of economic output.

The shortfall was up from 15.5 billion pounds a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said in London today. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 14 economists was 23 billion pounds.

Moody’s Investors Service says the U.K. needs to curb its deficit to keep its top-grade AAA rating as Prime Minister Gordon Brown resists calls for tougher steps to reduce borrowing. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling last week pledged to cut the gap in half in four years, stopping short of saying exactly how he will achieve the savings.

“While it is difficult to implement large spending cuts until the recession is over, the government must be more explicit in its plans,” said David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce. “An immediate freeze to the public sector wage bill would enhance credibility.”

The pound was little changed, trading at $1.6173 at 1:12 p.m. in London compared with $1.6158 yesterday. Ten-year government gilts fell 7 basis points to yield 3.771 percent.

Scale of Shortfall

Britain’s budget deficit will peak next year at 13.2 percent of GDP, the most in the Group of 20 nations, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Separate figures today showed business investment fell 0.6 percent in the third quarter and 19.9 percent from a year ago. Mortgage lending dropped 10 percent in November from the previous month, the Council of Mortgage Lenders said.

“While the economy may have contracted by less in the third quarter than previously thought, the dire state of the public finances and the continued weakness of money and credit underline the fragility of the outlook,” said Jonathan Loynes, chief economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London.

The figures are in line with Darling’s Dec. 9 forecast, a spokesman for the Treasury said. They show the first annual increase in tax receipts since September last year.

Darling and Brown’s approach to maintain spending until economic recovery is entrenched is winning the support of voters, narrowing Conservative leader David Cameron’s lead in opinion polls personal loans for bad credit.

Poll Readings

The gap narrowed 2 percentage points to 9 points from a poll a month earlier, an ICM Ltd. survey conducted between Dec. 11 and Dec. 13 found. The survey showed 40 percent backed the opposition, compared with 31 percent for Labour.

“Gordon Brown is maxing out on the nation’s credit card and doesn’t care how we are going to repay these debts in the future,” said George Osborne, the Conservative lawmaker who shadows Darling in Parliament.

The statistics office said today that the debt, 844.5 billion pounds, was the highest since modern debt records began in 1974. The monthly deficit was largely due to a 3 percent drop in revenue as payments of value added tax charged on goods and services slumped 14.2 percent from a year ago.

Spending in government departments increased 6.5 percent as welfare costs jumped 9.7 percent. Interest paid on the national debt rose 8.3 percent.

Fiscal Year

In the first eight months of the fiscal year, the deficit stood at 106.4 billion pounds, the highest since records began in January 1993. It compares with 49.3 billion pounds during the same period a year ago.

“The lack of detail on the nature of future spending cuts is very worrying,” said Andrew Goodwin, senior economic adviser to the Item Club, a group sponsored by Ernst & Young that makes forecasts using the Treasury’s model. “If the government wants to maintain the U.K.’s cherished AAA status, there will have to be significant extra fiscal tightening after the election.”

A cash measure of the deficit known as the public sector net cash requirement widened to 14.7 billion pounds last month from 10.6 billion pounds a year ago.

The Treasury spent 5.7 billion pounds to buy shares in Lloyds Banking Group Plc on Dec. 11, the statistics office said today. It received 2.5 billion pounds from the bank as a fee for exiting a program to insure its toxic assets.

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