Ministers 'brief on £200bn deficit'
UK public finance deficit now approaching £200 billion, Philip Hammond claims
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By Matt Hallam. |  |
Tuesday, 06, Oct 2009 02:48
By Matthew Champion.
Britain's public finances deficit is now approaching £200 billion, the Conservatives claimed on Tuesday.
The shadow Treasury team today warned that ministers were briefing the deficit, officially at £175 billion, had risen to a new record high.
Philip Hammond, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, laid the blame for this "gaping hole" squarely at the feet of Gordon Brown, who he dubbed a "roadblock to reform".
Mr Hammond said the public spending black hole was the "elephant in the room" at Labour's conference last week, where it was conspicuous by its absence.
He accused Mr Brown of effectively running a "Ponzi scheme" in allowing this "mountain of debt" to rise up.
George Osborne's deputy added that the Tories attributed the economic recovery to the Bank of England and not Mr Brown.
He also said the Tories would end the "lunacy" of use-it-or-lose-it budgets in public services that created a "mad panic of wasteful public spending".
In the Q&A session that followed Mr Hammond's speech a 15-year-old girl briefly took centre stage.
She demanded an apology from the prime minister for the "debt burden" he had left her generation, drawing the loudest applause from the conference hall in the economy session.