Harlow MP Robert Halfon backs chancellor of the exchequer’s autumn statement
Politics / Mon 21st Nov 2022 at 06:12pm
LAST week, was a very busy week for Harlow MP Robert Halfon.
It was his first week as a minister of state for skills and apprenticeships.
But it was also a week in which the new chancellor of the exchequer delivered his autumn statement.
We caught up with Mr Halfon back in the constituency to reflect on his busy week.
David Forman
2022-11-21 20:47:50
The Maastricht Treaty measure of debt is general government consolidated gross debt based on the European System of Accounts (ESA). The Office of National Statistics published data showing annual government ESA debt and it's percentage of GDP up to March 2022. For comparison, in March 1997 ESA debt was 44.3% of GDP just before Labour Party became the government. In March 2010 ESA debt was 70.6% of GDP just before the Conservative/Liberal Coalition took office. In March 2015 ESA debt was 86.4% of GDP just before Conservatives took power on their own. In March 2022 ESA debt stood at 101.9% of GDP. You can see it for yourself in Table M1 of the following link: https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/datasets/governmentdeficitanddebtreturn/current/rftm19tables1.xlsx
David Forman
2022-11-21 21:15:31
As useful comparison of Labour and Conservative government's ability to manage debt is given by the convergence criteria of the Maastricht Treaty signed in February 1992. One of the government finance criteria was that annual government deficit must not exceed 3% of GDP. Looking at Table M1 as quoted in my previous comment, the Blair)Brown Labour government's achieved this annual criteria on 10 occasions. However, the Conservatives have only managed to achieve this in 4 years since 2010.
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