BRITONS, many already weary of government austerity budgets that some economists say are impeding the country's recovery, are going to have to wait even longer for relief.

The architect of the austerity program, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told Parliament on Wednesday that the government had missed a debt-cutting goal and would have to extend the belt-tightening into 2018, a year longer than previously promised.

Although Mr Osborne maintained that the debt reduction plan was on track, his presentation drew heckling from the opposition, particularly after he argued that new tax measures would show that ''we're all in this together''.

The next general election in Britain will take place in 2015, well before the end of austerity measures that have included cuts in welfare services and the elimination of tens of thousands of public sector jobs.

The Office for Budget Responsibility, a non-partisan body that is monitoring the economy, said it now expected data to show that the economy shrank 0.1 per cent this year, instead of growing 0.8 per cent, as the office had forecast. It also said the economy would grow 1.2 per cent next year as opposed to the 2 per cent predicted earlier.

Reducing the budget deficit and getting the economy back on track has been the overriding objective binding the uneasy coalition between Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party and Liberal Democrat lawmakers that has governed Britain since 2010. Both parties have been betting that imposing the most severe government spending cuts in recent decades will reap economic rewards before the next election. But the last missed target for cutting debt, combined with a painfully slow recovery, risks undermining the strategy and stoking tensions within the coalition.

''The government's strategy is to combine deficit reduction with economic recovery, but at the moment we are not getting much of either,'' the KPMG chief economist, Andrew Smith, said.

The government has been defending its austerity measures, which include tax increases and spending cuts, by saying they help to keep Britain's borrowing costs low. Mr Osborne said the economy was facing ''a multitude of problems'' at home and abroad.

The New York Times