Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have had talks with the credit rating agencies with a view to restoring the United Kingdom’s AAA credit rating.

The current European credit rating regulation 1060/2009 stipulates that rating agencies monitor and review credit ratings on an ongoing basis and at least annually. Furthermore, the regulation states that:

"The credit rating agency shall inform the rated entity at least 12 hours before publication of the credit rating and of the principal grounds on which the rating is based in order to give the entity an opportunity to draw attention of the credit rating agency to any factual errors".

The Government’s long term economic plan has secured the UK’s strong credit rating, which has contributed to lower borrowing costs and helped protect frontline services. In June 2014, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) revised the outlook on their UK AAA rating to stable, from negative. The key driver cited by S&P was ‘Amid further progress in consolidating public finances, the UK’s economic recovery is broadening.’

S&P have assigned the UK sovereign the top triple AAA rating since they first published a UK rating in 1978. Moody’s and Fitch have assigned the UK the second highest rating Aa1 and AA+ respectively, with a stable outlook.