When you say the government is borrowing billions of pounds - who is it borrowing it from?

The Government borrows money by selling bonds, explains the BBC.

Public finances have been battered by the coronavirus pandemic since it gripped the UK from early 2020.

The Government has been handing out huge sums of money to businesses and employees to prevent millions of people winding up unemployed.

The cost of the Chancellor's furlough scheme - which pays furloughed staff 80 per cent of their wages up to £2,500 a month - is £14billion a month, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

So the Government must borrow money as it spends more than it gets in income - mainly from income tax or VAT.

And this is where bonds come into play.

A bond is a promise to make payments to whoever holds it on certain dates. There is a large payment on the final date - in effect, the repayment.

Interest is also paid to whoever owns the bond in the meantime. So it's basically an interest-paying 'IOU'.

The buyers of these bonds, or "gilts", are mainly financial institutions, like pension funds, investment funds, banks and insurance companies.

The Bank of England has snapped up £875billion of government bonds to help boost spending and investment in the economy.

Repayment terms can be as fast as one day - or stretch over decades.