The Treasury sank deep into the red over the past three months as the economic downturn undercut tax receipts forcing it to borrow record amounts, official figures showed this morning.

Government borrowing has leapt since April, making grim reading for Alistair Darling and helping to explain why the Chancellor is drawing up plans to overhaul the Treasury’s fiscal rules, put in place by Gordon Brown.

Over the first three months of the new financial year, April to June, the Treasury had to borrow £24.7 billion - the highest figure since records began in 1946 and up by a startling two-thirds from the £14.7 billion total for the same period last year to an all-time high for this period.

In June alone, borrowing jumped to £9.2 billion, up by almost £3 billion, or nearly 50 per cent from the previous June, and also setting a record for borrowing in any June.

City economists underlined the scale of the strains on the Government’s finances revealed by the numbers.

On present trends, government borrowing for the 2008-09 financial year would reach £57 billion, compared with Mr Darling’s forecast of £43 billion - a figure that was itself drastically revised up in the March Budget.

Economists said that the eventual outcome for borrowing for the year may not fully reflect the severity of the rise in the past three months, so that borrowing this year might not climb quite as high as £57 billion.

However, analysts also noted that the economic downturn was still set to tighten its grip still further, so that the longer-term outlook for the Treasury’s books looked bleak.

The headache for Mr Darling was emphasised as the figures also sharply revised up previously reported levels of borrowing in April, reflecting the pressures on the Treasury.

The deficit on the Treasury’s so-called “current” budget, which excludes investment spending, and which is used in gauging its “golden rule”, reached £20.4 billion in the first three months of 2008-09, drastically higher than the £12.5 billion figure for the same time last year and the largest quarterly shortfall in record.

It emerged yesterday that the Treasury is drawing up plans to rejig its two self-imposed fiscal rules to give it greater financial leeway as the economic slowdown deepens.

However, economists sounded warnings that this will do little to solve the longer-term financial stresses that it now confronts.

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