PBR in depth: LibDems blame Brown for fiscal problems
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Matthew Taylor said the massive £30bn increase in borrowing over five years was to tackle problems caused by the chancellor himself.
Link: Pre-Budget special report
He said:’If the chancellor does not tackle the problems he has caused, we will go bust.’
Taylor said Britain had a unique manufacturing problem caused by government interference in industry – notably extra red tape and tax complication.He said Brown could not afford to go on using an unsustainable boom in consumer credit to support economic growth.
He said the chancellor had to ‘face up to the problems and stop passing the buck’.
Former Tory chancellor Kenneth Clarke said Brown was ‘talking his way through the collapse of the absurd forecasts he made just six months ago in his Budget’.
He accused Brown of repeating the mistakes of chancellors of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s – but not the John Major government, when Clarke was in charge of the Treasury – of giving into political pressue to boost spending and ignoring the consequences till an economic problem had become a full blown economic crisis.