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Treasury Committee Head - National Debt not the most important thing
baby_boomer
Posts: 3,883 Forumite
Guardian -
False debate over the national debt is distracting us from human face of crisis
Maybe John McFall should move away from his national role of holding the Treasury to account for its budgetary deceptions over our public finances and accept a lesser role on a social affairs committee where he can be true to his beliefs?
He's good a grandstanding against bankers, but in the midst of this financial crisis we need a steady and impartial hand on the tiller.
It's such a shame that in the UK our legislative committees are so weak at holding the government to account.
False debate over the national debt is distracting us from human face of crisis
Maybe John McFall should move away from his national role of holding the Treasury to account for its budgetary deceptions over our public finances and accept a lesser role on a social affairs committee where he can be true to his beliefs?
He's good a grandstanding against bankers, but in the midst of this financial crisis we need a steady and impartial hand on the tiller.
It's such a shame that in the UK our legislative committees are so weak at holding the government to account.
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Comments
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Seems a statement of the obvious... the national debts is only one factor albiet an important one in the life of the country.
It would, after all seem, that the debt as a percentage of GDP will be less than that after the second world war... we did indeed recover from that.
I'm not sure what an 'impartial hand' is.. although I am currently available if that helps (I would need over £150k (so I could feel the pain of the 50% tax) and also a second home allowance ...0 -
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1984ReturnsForReal wrote: »We only finished paying that money back a couple of years ago!
Exactly my point....
We didn't simply say the most important thing was to address the 'war' debt issue, instead we had a sensible balance that involved, over those 64 years, in spending money on education, NHS, roads, railways, infrastructure, social services in general etc.etc. and allowed people to spend their money on houses, cars, holidays, sport, entertainment etc etc
exactly as it should be.0 -
There are other political issues to be sure.
To clarify, I think the debate over the National Debt that McFall - as Treasury Select Committee Chairman - needs to prioritise is:
"How big is the National Debt going to be?" and what is the long term strategy for bringing it under control (apart from "hopeful" growth forecasts)?
Alternatively we could just leave it up to the financial markets & the IMF to trash the £ and save money on his new allowance as head of this committee.0 -
baby_boomer wrote: »There are other political issues to be sure.
To clarify, I think the debate over the National Debt that McFall - as Treasury Select Committee Chairman - needs to prioritise is:
"How big is the National Debt going to be?" and what is the long term strategy for bringing it under control (apart from "hopeful" growth forecasts)?
Alternatively we could just leave it up to the financial markets & the IMF to trash the £ and save money on his new allowance as head of this committee.
It's not the role of the treasury select committee to decide financial policy but only to hold the executive to account.
There can be no realistic policy longer than 1 year, unless you think the Labout will win the next election.0 -
Exactly my point....
We didn't simply say the most important thing was to address the 'war' debt issue, instead we had a sensible balance that involved, over those 64 years, in spending money on education, NHS, roads, railways, infrastructure, social services in general etc.etc. and allowed people to spend their money on houses, cars, holidays, sport, entertainment etc etc
exactly as it should be.
Lets hope there is not another "proper" war then......
But at least if anyone threatens to invade us they will have some nice roads to drive their tanks down & some good infrastructure to bus their troops around.
As for Education etc.. Do you know that alot of the building projects are on hold because the Government agency dealing with it has run out of funds? & the same goes for hospitals because the PFI isnt an intiative for the private sector anymore..
Sounds like you have been conned..Not Again0 -
Education being mentioned reminded me of the weekend's "Primary Academies" story.
Was I the only one who heard Children's Minister Beverley Hughes say:
"The costs of this would be very large indeed, and of course at a time when the Tories are going to have to cut school budgets anyway, I think schools will be worried about the impact on their budgets."
And thought....that this was the first admission from the Govt that cuts will follow, and it will be the Tories in power...?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8018281.stm0 -
I am getting bemused by the amount of frothing over national debt. You'd think that coming out of recession with less debt than our competitor 1st world economies is a bad thing. Yes, we'll have 80% debt. Still less than Germany or America or Japan. And still substantially less than we had for decades of the latter half of the 20th Century when the sky didn't fall in either.
Debt has just gone up 40% and will take up to 20 years or so to pay off. Debt went up 20% in the last recession and took a decade to pay off. And investment continued and the sky didn't fall in then either.0 -
1984ReturnsForReal wrote: »Lets hope there is not another "proper" war then......
But at least if anyone threatens to invade us they will have some nice roads to drive their tanks down & some good infrastructure to bus their troops around.
As for Education etc.. Do you know that alot of the building projects are on hold because the Government agency dealing with it has run out of funds? & the same goes for hospitals because the PFI isnt an intiative for the private sector anymore..
Sounds like you have been conned..
I'm not sure what point you are making.
It's a reasonably demonstratable fact that under both Labour and Conservative governments, investment was make in education, road, etc, etc since 1945 .... is that really controversial?
If you're saying that PFI is nonsense, then I agree, as it always was simply an accounting device to transfer capital projects (and so public sector debt) to a revenue stream (with very bad return) with no transfer of risk to the private sector.
If you say that investment in new building for schools is now stopping then that's true too.
But that doesn't mean the end of the the world or even of the relative prosperity of the UK.0 -
A couple of points..
Firstly if we had another war now we couldnt easily afford to build any weapons.
Secondly PFIs arent working at the moment because business dont want to invest.
Thirdly the education & infrastructure projects are having promised funding withdrawn.
The billions mentioned on infrastructure is simply to pay for old contracts & 2012.
Darling & Brown have financed us for decades to pay for old projects, coal power stations & a few nuclear.Not Again0
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