Amendment of the law

I know that the hon. Gentleman always listens intently when I speak in the House; it worries me. I say to him that the Barnett formula cuts both ways, and the Treasury has confirmed that the departmental expenditure limit will be reduced for 2010-11, so it is a bad time to be cutting investment in the recovery when there are alternative cuts that could be made. The Budget also tells us how out of touch the Government were. They were frantically running around pretending that they were not complacent last year, when they said that we would come out of recession only a few weeks from now. Yet the Chancellor managed to say that he believed the economy would begin to recover this year. Given that the OECD and Ernst and Young are still forecasting negative growth for 2010, it seems almost unbelievable that the Government can forecast that we will come out of recession in 2009. I fear that when the pre-Budget report is delivered at the end of the year, the Government will give us another three or four-month target, and that may not be met either. The full implications of the recession are clear—not least the fact that, at 2 million, unemployment is already hitting the target forecast for the end of 2009. The Government appear to have been dragged here kicking and screaming to come clean about the true size of the national debt, which they have left as a mortgage debt for our children. It is £1.6 trillion-ish. I am not sure whether that includes everything, but it is bound to include an awful lot. I am not sure what the figure per household is in the United Kingdom: £70,000, perhaps. There are people in the real world who cannot afford a mortgage for their houses, but they may well be left to pay for one in the form of their share of the debt that the Government have built up.