KHOODEELAAR! TOLD Darling so! That he was NOT reliable. That he was used to making misleading statements. Now even the Murdoch-ed London Times reports Darling to have been so! It is the same Darling that defied reason and played second fiddle to Big Business and made £Billions of debts for Crossrail scam!

2325 GMT

16 December 2009


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From The Times

December 17, 2009

Darling refuses to publish interest estimates

Suzy Jagger, Politics & Business Correspondent

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Alistair Darling refused yesterday to disclose Treasury projections of how much interest Britain will have to pay every year to service the country’s burgeoning debt pile.

According to independent estimates, the interest bill will more than double in the next five years to £71.45 billion, almost twice the annual budget for the Ministry of Defence. The sum would represent the biggest single outgoing for the Government after the NHS. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) anticipates that the interest bill will jump from £55 billion in 2011-12, to £59.9 billion the following year, and £71.45 billion in 2014-15.

Despite repeated requests, the Treasury has refused to make its internal projections public. Michael Fallon, the Tory MP for Sevenoaks, said: “It makes me wonder if the Treasury’s estimates are much higher than the IFS, which would be seriously disturbing.”

Mr Darling’s department has been asked by the Treasury Select Committee to publish the debt interest numbers over the past few days. The committee — one of the most influential in Parliament — has spent this week questioning economists, Treasury civil servants and the Chancellor about last week’s Pre-Budget Report.

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Even though top Treasury civil servants had agreed to furnish the committee with the internal projections by Tuesday evening, none were forth-coming. Addressing the 14-member committee, the Chancellor defended his decision not to reveal the interest projections: “We will publish debt interest when it is fixed. We do not publish every assumption and every estimate because it would not reflect government policy.”

Mr Fallon, who is the most senior Conservative on the committee demanded to know why the forecast bill was not made public in the Pre-Budget Report.

Mr Darling replied: “For the last ten years, we have been publishing debt numbers on a three-year programme. What we have not done is to publish estimates and forecasts beyond that.

“Even in the best of times, unlike now when there is a great deal of uncertainty. Nothing has changed from this year to last year. We only publish what has been decided.”

The issue of Britain’s debt interest bill is critical because the sums will be taken into account by the world’s credit rating agencies when they decide whether to cut the country’s rating next year.

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