ي arguments think tank Common Wealth أن بريطانيا تضيع فرصة لاستثمار BILLIONS في البنية التحتية بالتمسك ب quotas national accounting صارمة التي تمنع الهيئات governmental distantة عن borrowing on their own account. Switching to the European system would end the UK's 'self-inflicted status as an international outlier' and let public corporations like GB Energy raise money for urgent capital spending.

The plea comes ahead of Prime Minister Andy Burnham's speech to the Labour Party's conference in Liverpool on Tuesday. He and Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey face a challenging budget on Oct. 28, with little room against their main fiscal rule that taxes must cover day-to-day spending and net debt at almost 94% of GDP.

Both France's national energy giant EDF and Germany's Kf W development bank raise their own debt in the market but none appears in the fiscal numbers. The arrangement reduces the French government's debt-to-GDP ratio by 2.8 percentage points and Germany's by 10.7 points, Common Wealth calculated. Labour was looking at the option under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who planned to let public corporations borrow on their own account for infrastructure projects, exempt from 'arbitrary accounting blocks in our fiscal rules.'