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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I am familiar with these arguments and with the £3.2 trillion figure. I think that there is probably an understatement of the total stock of Government debt and that the true figure lies somewhere between that figure and the Government's figure. When we get into government—in a few weeks' time, I hope—the office for budget responsibility will need to establish what figure the Government should use as the basis for their economic policy and strategy, which is not necessarily the figure that a statistician would think is the right one for the purpose of Government statistics, but one that an economist would consider appropriate for setting policy. As I was saying a moment ago, setting out in detail what is required to deal with the fiscal mess that we are in would have also meant confirming the Prime Minister's personal responsibility for the boom and bust that we have just experienced. It was not just many of the spending increases that were wrong-headed—damaging enough though they have been, generating a deficit of about 12 per cent. of GDP—but the rhetoric that accompanied them. Millions of individuals and companies up and down the land are living right now with the consequences of having believed the Prime Minister's mantra when he was Chancellor that he had put an end to boom and bust. They went out and borrowed more than they otherwise would have done because they trusted his mantra.