Lord Naseby
Main Page: Lord Naseby (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Naseby's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Sassoon
My Lords, when the Government came into office, we had been put on negative credit watch by one of the main rating agencies, unprecedented for the UK, and were paying interest of £120 million a day. The first or second largest holder of bonds in the world had talked of the UK as a “must to avoid” and described the UK’s gilts as,
“resting on a bed of nitroglycerine”.
The Government have restored confidence in our public finances by setting out a clear plan to restore the budget to balance and that is what enables us to borrow what we need to borrow on the international markets on reasonable terms.
Lord Naseby
Has my noble friend had a chance to read the statement from the shadow Chancellor in which he said that the problem for the Labour Party was that it had built up a reputation for 13 years of overspending and debt? Is that not near-bankruptcy?
Lord Sassoon
I completely agree with my noble friend. That is indeed it. I was looking at the Oxford English Dictionary this morning and I saw that one definition of “bankrupt” is,
“one who has brought himself into debt by reckless expenditure or riotous living”.
I would not presume to accuse the previous Government of riotous living.