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Pre-Budget Report

I always like interventions from the former Chancellor and I am grateful to him for attending today’s statement. However, his central point was that debt is higher under us than under him. Debt stood at 44 per cent. of national income when he left office and it is 37 per cent. and below today. He should be congratulating us on our achievement. What if I had taken the advice of the former Chancellor at any point during the last 10 years? In 1998, he was predicting a recession and he opposed giving independence to the Bank of England. In his column on 21 June 1998, he wrote:"““I have been forecasting doom and gloom for the British economy in my column in the Financial Mail for most of the past year””." That was the first of 10 years of stable growth in our economy.