Well done Brooks Newmark, who’s taking on Gordon Brown over his fiddled debt statistics. The Tory MP, and member of the Treasury Select Committee, releases a report today which builds on Coffee House’s work by adding together some of the more recent off-balance sheet debts and liabilities that Brown has swept under the fiscal carpet. The grand debt total? Some £1,854 billion – around 127 percent of GDP, and over 3 times greater than the Govenrment’s 40 percent debt ceiling. Here’s what’s included in that:
It you throw in the potential costs of the banking bailout, that figure climbs to £2,354 billion – some 161.1 percent of GDP.
Of course, at these levels, national debt is set to be one of the biggest political concerns over the next few years – not just how to pay it back, but how it should be measured. There’s an argument that pension liabilities shouldn’t be included on any official measure – few other countries do – but the general transparency of Newmark’s figure should be admired, and should more be the template for future administrations than Brown’s narrower debt definition.
But will future governments be keen on such transparency? I fear not. As soon as they reveal the True Extent of all that debt, they’ll be under extra pressure to pay it off. And that’s a constraint few ministers will welcome.
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