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Finance Bill

My hon. Friend is a considerable expert on raising funds through the bond markets and speaks with some authority. I hesitate to join any call for a debt default, and I am the last person to want gilt auctions not to succeed. It was positive to hear that the Treasury Committee was given some encouraging signals from the Debt Management Office today, and I am interested to learn whether the Financial Secretary wishes to give us any colour on that—I rather doubt that he will. An event such as my hon. Friend outlines would clearly be catastrophic; if we are not able to fund our public debt through gilt instruments, we are exactly back to the situation that this country was in after the previous period of a prolonged Labour Administration, when we had to knock on the door of the International Monetary Fund.