Pre-Budget Report

I want to make a bit of progress and then I will happily give way again in a few moments. The Chief Secretary has wrong-footed me by being so surprisingly brief and I do not want to spend all my time taking interventions. We have ended up where we are today: the only country in the G20 not yet out of recession—the Chancellor confirmed that on Tuesday—running the biggest deficit in the industrial world, unemployment at nearly 2.5 million and, as I said earlier, with the highest number of young people out of work on record. We are in the longest and deepest recession in our history, with more companies going bust in this downturn than in any other. After 13 years of Labour Government, the poorest are getting poorer. Most importantly, confidence in the Government's economic management, both at home and abroad, already shaky, has crumbled since the PBR. It is no exaggeration to say that it is only the prospect of a change of Government that has prevented an even more marked negative reaction in market sentiments since the PBR. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) finds that amusing. I know that he is a great expert on financial markets. Mark Schofield of Citigroup, for example, said:""Unless we get a credible set of measures put in place quickly, which seems unlikely unless we get a Conservative government with a clear majority at the next election, we think the UK's Aaa rating will be right up on the radar screens in a very short space of time.""