There is a rather confusing array of statistics for measuring Government debt. For the brave, I have written a lengthy post here: Understanding different debt statistics. The problem is that there are many different statistics which offer similar results.

Annual Government borrowing. is measured through:

• PSNCR (used to be called PSBR),
• Cumulative public sector current account, and
• government deficit.

Total Government Debt is measured through:

• Public sector net Debt
• Public sector net Borrowing (similar to net debt, but with different accounting rules)
• National debt. People often refer to public sector net debt as the National debt. However, the national debt is a statistic that is no longer produced. It used to focus on the gross liabilities of the National Loans Fund (whatever that was).
• Government gross general borrowing (ignores net assets and government corporations) and is used on an EU wide scale.
  

• Then on top of that the issue with public sector debt is the extent to which we include imputed debt like PFI and Bank liabilities from privatised banks
• We have public sector debt with bank capitalisations included and we have public sector debt without banking liabilities.
• We also have the issue of how much liabilities we should include from bank nationalisations and loan guarantees.
  
• Then we have some people who think we should include future pension contributions in public sector liabilities.
  

• Looking through the government statistics pages, I really found it quite confusing. Everywhere I looked they seemed to be using different terminology for government borrowing. I've spent 2-3 hours reading through this.
• When I teach A Level economics my main concern is trying to prevent students get confused between government borrowing and the current account deficit.

Of course, US statistics are different as well.

O well, I'm sure this will make for a nice relaxing Sunday morning read!