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Northern Rock

My hon. Friend makes the point that this country has a very strong and stable economy. We have had more than 10 years of growth and we have very low unemployment and historically low interest and mortgage rates, which is in complete contrast to what we had in the early 1990s when the then Government lurched from one problem to another because they could not keep inflation down, they could not get interest rates down and they had unemployment of almost 3 million. No wonder they got into the difficulties that they faced then.