Labour hid ‘scorched earth’ debts

[Vague_Boy]

It's getting worse by the hour it seems. Now the figure is £5 trillion:

 

A Lot Worse: UK Mired In £5 Trillion Of Debt

 

Britain has sunk into a pit of debt which is five times deeper than previously feared, with the country now owing the equivalent of £200,000 per household.

 

Instead of the £1 trillion reading normally presented as the nation's debt, the UK is in the red by closer to £5 trillion, figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal.

 

The oft-quoted £903bn figure for public sector net debt is a borrowing sum calculated by the ONS according to international standards.

 

But a broader set of ONS figures taking in Government liabilities show unfunded public service pension obligations could add another £1.2 trillion and liabilities in unfunded state pension schemes a further £1.35 trillion.

 

The Government's stakes in RBS and Lloyds account for an extra £1.5 trillion - leaving a debt mountain of £4.953 trillion once public sector net debt is added in.

 

The sum is almost four times the size of the UK's total gross domestic product in 2009.

 

LINK

 

Four times GDP, that's worse than ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH!!!!

 

Even worse than Zimbabwe! (link)

 

Still, we're top of the charts at something.

 

£200,000 per household? I hope no one is planning on retiring any time soon. Gordon (The Bankers Friend) Brown is though, and he thanks you for his £3 million pension. Keep working hard so that there's money to pay it.

[Alex C.]

It's getting worse by the hour it seems. Now the figure is £5 trillion:

 

 

 

LINK

 

Four times GDP, that's worse than ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH!!!!

 

Even worse than Zimbabwe! (link)

 

Still, we're top of the charts at something.

 

£200,000 per household? I hope no one is planning on retiring any time soon. Gordon (The Bankers Friend) Brown is though, and he thanks you for his £3 million pension. Keep working hard so that there's money to pay it.

 

Stop being so dramatic - it's only worse than any other countries on earth because you're comparing two completely different figures.

 

edit: I don't know if you missed my questions here, but I'm still interested

[Wildcat]

Stop being so dramatic - it's only worse than any other countries on earth because you're comparing two completely different figures.

 

edit: I don't know if you missed my questions here, but I'm still interested

 

No country includes future public sector pension costs as part of the debt, just like they don't include future public sector pay as part of the debt.

 

The idea of doing so is plain stupid. The biggest public sector spending scheme the LGPS is even in a surplus for 2007-8 to the tune of £6billion.

[Grandad.Malky]

Doesn't surprise anyone who has expected the Tories to peddle this line

 

The Public Accounts Committee (chaired by a Tory) has certainly taken its eye off the ball then.

 

Well Thatcher as been the scapegoat for the last 30 years so I suppose its only to be expected, at least this lot wont be around for 30 months.

[RichJay]

It's getting worse by the hour it seems. Now the figure is £5 trillion:

 

 

 

LINK

 

Four times GDP, that's worse than ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH!!!!

 

Even worse than Zimbabwe! (link)

 

Still, we're top of the charts at something.

 

£200,000 per household? I hope no one is planning on retiring any time soon. Gordon (The Bankers Friend) Brown is though, and he thanks you for his £3 million pension. Keep working hard so that there's money to pay it.

 

 

 

The figure of £5 trillion is for all future liabilities. As someone on another forum put it...

 

the figure for liabilities is like counting all the food you have to buy over your entire life, adding it up, looking at your income and then deciding you're bankrupt because you can't buy it all at once.

[Wildcat]

It's well known that by end 2007 the deficit was much higher than expected because of lower than expected tax receipts (i.e. poor forecasting). Would it have been a problem if the banking crisis hadn't happened? Quite simply no it wouldn't have. The deficit was the same size as what Labour inherited from the Tories in 1997.

 

 

But the forecasting was poor and quite righly Labour should take responsibility for that. But the deficit as it stood on the eve of the banking crisis is not the root cause of the problems we have now.

 

I an pretty sure that public debt as a proportion of GDP was 42.% in 1997 and 37% in 2007. You can check it easily on the uk spending website

[Wildcat]

I an pretty sure that public debt as a proportion of GDP was 42.% in 1997 and 37% in 2007. You can check it easily on the uk spending website

 

It looks like I slightly exaggerated the overspend under Labour:

 

1997 41.92%

2007 35.74%

 

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_national_debt_chart.html

 

So under Labour the National debt dropped by 6%.... so not much evidence for this structural deficit problem then...

[Tony]

There you go, Wildcat just solved the deficit problem in an instant with a link to a website.

 

What on earth is everyone worrying about? Doh, we must all look so silly now.

[Wildcat]

There you go, Wildcat just solved the deficit problem in an instant with a link to a website.

 

What on earth is everyone worrying about? Doh, we must all look so silly now.

 

I didn't mention any solutions to the deficit problem? all the link sets out is the historical perspective and evidence of where the economy is now.

 

Unlike the coalition Govt I am interested in evidence based policy decisions, not ones based on ridiculous transparent propoganda and fear raising about future public sector pension liabilites or on a structural deficit that is simply not there.

 

As Pat McFadden put it in an intelligent speech on the economy (although I fundamentally disagree with him on aspects of it). He is right when he describes the Tory policies:

 

The new Government on the other hand has chosen to put Britain at the head of a new drive for austerity. It has chosen to cut faster and cut deeper than we would. And it has done so with no accompanying plan for growth or for jobs.

 

We know from the Treasury’s own figures their plans will destroy jobs in the public and private sectors. And yet they make huge assumptions about the private sector stepping up to the plate and creating millions of jobs with no plan for how it is to be done.

 

This is faith based economics, with the Conservatives in the role of the High Priest and the Lib Dems displaying the zeal of the convert. It imposes enormous pain on the country and takes a huge risk with our future.

 

http://www.fabians.org.uk/publications/extracts/neither-thatcherism-nor-denial

[Berberis]

It looks like I slightly exaggerated the overspend under Labour:

 

1997 41.92%

2007 35.74%

 

...

 

Lets put that on context shall we.

 

1980 42.11

1981 44.40

1982 44.55 - High

1983 43.13

1984 43.59

1985 43.45

1986 41.81

1987 39.14

1988 34.98

1989 29.30

1990 26.69

1991 25.27 - Low

1992 26.70

1993 30.97

1994 36.05

1995 39.55

1996 41.20

1997 41.92

1998 40.14

1999 37.86

2000 35.37

2001 30.57

2002 29.33 - Low

2003 30.45

2004 31.82

2005 33.81

2006 34.92

2007 35.74

2008 36.25

2009 44.19 - UK exits recession

2010 53.15 - High

 

Debt under the Labour government had been growing steadily since 2002, so any claims the problem of debt was caused by the recession are baseless. The recession highlighted the problem, not caused it.