The Economy

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

The Prime Minister likes to say—the Tories have said it in party political broadcasts and keep repeating it—that the national debt is somehow falling. The national debt has got larger and larger—[Interruption.] No, let me correct the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier)—there is a difference between the national debt and the deficit. The national debt has got higher and higher and higher. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Mr Mudie) was right to say that it now stands at more than £1.4 trillion. He knows that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have added more to the national debt in their four and a half years in power than the previous Administration did in 13 years.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is clearly struggling a little with the definitions of how we run the public finances. The reason why the national debt is going up is that in 2010 this Government inherited a deficit, which is the difference between income and outgoings, of £156 billion. That had been set in place some time before. If the hon. Gentleman remembers, the deficit in 2005—fully two or three years before the financial crisis—was already around £50 billion a year. The previous Government, then, were increasing the national debt. It is going up because the only way to account for the deficit is by putting it on the national debt. The hon. Gentleman must understand the most basic facts of fiscal policy.

[Chris Leslie]

We have an admission there—that the national debt is rising and has risen more in the past four and a half years than it did in the 13 years of the previous Administration.