---

Autumn Forecast

The noble Lord might consider recommending to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that this Statement be submitted for the Booker Prize for creative literature. It really is rather strange. In repeating the Statement, the Minister said that some people said that these growth figures would not happen. That is not true. They said that they would happen as long as we did not cut too deeply or too fast. That is what the previous Government said. The growth figures in the first seven months of this Government are down to the previous Government’s policies and the general policies within industry. The Minister might care to remember—as I pointed out a number of times when I was sat on that side of the House—that British manufacturing output was growing and that we were the sixth largest manufacturing country in the world. At the same time, French manufacturing was in decline. At the same time, President Sarkozy has expressed concern that the French might have trouble with their triple A rating. It is also not true to say that this is the largest deficit in peacetime history. Simply typing ““history of the national debt”” into any search engine, or going to the library, will tell him that national debt in peacetime, as a percentage of GDP, was significantly higher through most of the 19th century—it was the way we financed the Empire—and much of the 20th century. Indeed, it was only the previous Labour Government who paid off the final debt from the Napoleonic wars and the Second World War. Can the Minister now tell us why he thinks that cutting faster and deeper in the coming year will help when we are already recovering? In a year’s time he will not be able to carry on the political, or party propaganda, line that somehow or other in seven months the Government have turned it round. They have not. That was already happening. What matters is the next 12 months.