Pre-Budget Report

I am glad that I took that intervention, because it enables me to say that the budget deficit next year will be the highest on record—higher than when Denis Healey went to the International Monetary Fund—and the national debt, at 58 per cent., is the highest on record. Let me remind the hon. Gentleman that this Government inherited a golden economic legacy from the previous Conservative Government; but this Government are bequeathing to their successors a complete basket case of an economy. The debt figures are truly shocking, as the hon. Gentleman has just reminded us: the national debt is set to double to £1 trillion, and there is that record 8 per cent. deficit. We used to think of Britain as a low-tax, low-debt economy that was one of the most successful in the world, but now we must get used to seeing Britain as the rest of the world does: as a high-tax, high-debt country that cannot get a grip on its public finances. Let us turn to table B10 on page 198. [Interruption.] It is probably not in the Whips' handout, but if Government Members were to read the report, they would see that for the first time in living memory the Treasury forecast does not even try to pretend that the current budget will come back into surplus in the medium term. The Chancellor's assertion on Monday that it was all okay, because, by"““2015-16, we will again be borrowing only to invest,””—[Official Report, 24 November 2008; Vol. 483, c. 493.]" was greeted with total derision in the Chamber. He was 100 per cent. wrong about the borrowing forecasts that he made just eight months ago, and now he wants us to take him seriously when he gives us borrowing forecasts for seven years' time. That is not in the next Parliament but in the Parliament after next. They are ridiculous, fantasy figures from a Government who have completely lost the ability to manage taxpayers' money and control public expenditure.