AS a student who has not yet started to pay direct tax, I would just like to thank the government for ensuring that when I do begin to earn a wage and income tax, myself and my generation will be saddled with the highest levels of taxation ever seen in the UK, as a direct result of the profligacy and over-spending of our Prime Minster and this government since 1997, of which the Lord Chancellor and MP for Blackburn has been a senior member throughout.

Due to the Pre-Budget Report announced on Monday, national borrowing will rise to £1trillion, and national debt from £78billion to £118billion.

This means that by the time people of my generation begin to pay income tax, borrowing will account for 57% of the GDP.

The last time national debt was nearly as a high as this was the 1970s, during the last Labour administration, in which James Callaghan had to apply to the IMF to the bail the country out.

Of course during this recession, families and small businesses need to be helped, to avoid the country going into recession, but rather than even further borrowing to attempt to get out of the recession, every department in Whitehall should be prioritising spending.

This need not mean cutting spending on schools or the NHS, but on needless bureaucracy and red-tape.

Everyone needs to learn to budget correctly and live within their means. This includes the government.

It is precisely because Gordon Brown continued to borrow more during the past years of growth that the country is being hit so badly by the current crisis.

The measures announced on Monday by the Chancellor may put money back in people's pockets in the short term, but after the next general election this massive increase in government borrowing will need to be repaid.

Then all of us, not merely the super-rich, will be hit by and forced to pay for eleven years of criminal economic management.

It will be people such as myself who have not even begun to earn a wage, as well as all those who have been working hard all their lives that will be forced to make amends for Mr Brown's failures as Chancellor and Prime Minister and this government'’s failure in general.

The country will not, and should not, let them get away with it.

SIMON WILKINSON, Heaning Avenue, Blackburn.